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FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 




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FIVE YEARS OLD 
OR THEREABOUTS 

SOME CHAPTERS ON THE PSYCHOLOGY 
AND TRAINING OF LITTLE CHILDREN 



BY 

/ 

MARGARET DRUMMOND, M.A. 
to 

LECTURER ON PSYCHOLOGY IN THE EDINBURGH 

PROVINCIAL TRAINING COLLEGE 

AUTHOR OF 'THE DAWN OF MIND,' ETC. 



WITH FRONTISPIECE 



NEW YORK 

LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO 

LONDON: EDWARD ARNOLD 

1 920 

All rights reserved 



L3i |,? 



&>* 



CHft 

Publisher 
OCT 13 1920 



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These things shall be ! A loftier race 

Than e'er the world hath known, shall rise, 

With flame of freedom in their souls, 
And light of knowledge in their eyes. 

J. A. Symonds. 



PREFACE 

In view of the activity and interest at present displayed 
in child-welfare schemes and nursery schools it is 
important that we should all realise that, unless such 
plans are based on a true knowledge of the nature and 
possibilities of the little ones concerned, much harm 
may be done and many opportunities will certainly be 
lost. The day is long past when it could be maintained 
that the education of the early years can be safely 
trusted to the maternal instinct. We all now recognise 
that instinct requires to be supplemented by know- 
ledge ; and the essential knowledge is to be obtained 
only by close study of the child. In a former book, 
The Dawn of Mind, I described the beginnings of 
such a study; in the present work I have set forth 
some of the further results which I have obtained 
during the last three years. Each child, no doubt, is 
different from all others ; yet the path that all traverse 
in the course of their intellectual development is 
broadly the same, and the aim of this book will be 
attained if by its means the windings of that path are 
to some extent illumined for those who aspire to guide 
the little wayfarers. 

MARGARET DRUMMOND. 



Moray House Training College, 
Edinburgh. 



i 



CONTENTS 1 



CHAP. 


PAGE 


I. INTRODUCTORY ...... 


1 


II. MENTAL AGE ...... 


12 


III. THE UNCONSCIOUS MINI) .... 


. 24 


IV. THE MOTHER TONGUE ..... 


. 45 


V. the mother tongue (continued) . 


. 62 


VI. A MONTESSORI EXPERIMENT .... 


. 81 


VII. WRITING, READING, AND SPELLING 


. 103 


VIII. NUMBER . . . . 


. 119 


IX. SICK CHILDREN ...... 


. 136 


X. THE NURSERY SCHOOL ... 


. 154 


LIST OF OTHER WORKS 


. 178 


INDEX 


. 179 



TABLE OF NORMAL DEVELOPMENT 

FTRST FIGURE, BOYS : SECOND FIGURE, GIRLS 



Age. 
7 days 

1 month 

2 „ 

3 „ 

4 „ 

5 „ 



18 „ 
2 years 



H 

4 

4* 
B 

6 



„ F . . | „ . , . Chest Cir- Head Cir- 

Weight I Height in cum f eren ce cumference 

in lbs. Inches. j n Inches . i n inches. 



23, 22% 



7%, 7i 

8J, 71 

10*, 10 

12%, 12 

13f, 13i 
14f, 14* 

15|, 15* 

17%,' 17 

20%,"l9f 29," 28$ 



13%, 13 



22|, 22 
26%, 25| 



31J, 30 
35, 34 



30, 29% 
32%, 32* 



41, 39* 41* 
45, 43% ! 44, "43 J 

49£, 48 ', 46J, 46 



15, 14% 



18, 17% 
18.*, 18 

19, 18* 



20£, 19| 

20|,"20i 

21%,' 21 
23i,'22j 

23|, 23i 



14, 13* 



14-i, 


14 


15, 


14* 


16, 


15$ 


16*, 


16 


16f 


16* 



17, 16| 



17*, 17 



18%, 18 


18%, 18 


19, 18% 


19J, 19 


19f,"l9* 


20i,"20 


20i,'20J 


20& 20% 



Sucks vigorously. Kicks 

and moves arms freely. 

Sneezes. Can raise head. 

Reacts to sound. 
Sheds tears. Yawns. Holds 

up head for short time and 

turns it. 
Eyes follow moving object. 

Begins to notice strange 

rooms. 
Hands moved more freely. 

Grips object firmly. Smiles 

in response. 
Looks attentively at objects. 

Examines own hands. 
Examines hands and feet. 

Begins to use two hands 

together. 
Cuts two lower central in- 
cisors. Can sit erect for 

several minutes. 
Stretches out arms to be ta- 
ken. Makes man}' sounds. 

Waves in response. 

Tries to get objects. Plays 

Peep. 

Understands simple com- 
mands. 

Attempts to stand. Creeps. 

Four upper incisors. Stands 
alone. 

Runs about freely. First 
words. Likes pictures. 

Sixteen teeth. Says short 
sentences of two or three 
words. Scribbles with pen- 
cil. Reasoning. 

Knows name and use of 
many common objects. 
Twenty teeth. 

Uses words Why? and 
When ? 

Much initiative. 

Some appreciation of time 
and space. 

Can name some colours. 

Knows letters. Can skip. 

Can count. 

Permanent four molars. Can 
read, spell, and write simple 
words of one syllable. 

Knows days of week apart 
from special teaching. Can 
copy a diamond. 



FIVE YEARS OLD OR 
THEREABOUTS 



CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTORY 

4 To know a child is to love it, and the more we know it, 
the better we love it.' 

These are the words of one of the greatest of our students 
of childhood, G. Stanley Hall ; and they contain a great 
truth — a truth which only those who have endeavoured 
patiently and sympathetically to know a child can realise. 

The more intimately one knows a child the more clearly 
one sees his faults as our faults, his virtues as his own. The 
wonderful new human life which every year blossoms upon 
this planet of ours contains possibilities for good which 
would surpass a poet's dream. Our greatest need is to know 
the nature of this young life that we may guide it aright. 

Stanley Hall and others have done notable pioneer work 
in this region ; but it is not to be wondered at if much of 
the delicate intricacy of the child's mental growth is still 
hidden from us. 

Preyer and Perez and Miss Millicent Shinn have done 
much to guide us in our attempts to study the mental 
development which belongs to the early months of life. 
But even of babies we have still too few scientific studies, 
and most of these studies come to an end while the child 
is still in the actively formative period. 

Many people indeed seem to believe that a child of six 
or seven is past the age for being studied. 

A 



2 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

Yet it is by continuing through the years of childhood 
the same close loving observation that we have given to the 
baby that we obtain insight into the intimate nature of the 
process by means of which the plastic and suggestible 
child, who, in the words of Whitman, actually becomes the 
first object he looks upon with wonder, pity, love, or dread, 
attains to that self-knowledge, self -reverence, self-control 
which alone avail to lead our life to sovereign power. 

In The Prelude Wordsworth has described to us the 
growth of a poet's mind as seen in retrospect by himself. 

We all know the wonderful lines in which he describes 
his early attitude towards nature :— 

' Nature then 
To me was all in all. I cannot paint 
What then I was. The sounding cataract 
Haunted me like a passion : the tall rock, 
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, 
Their colours and their forms, were then to me 
An appetite ; a feeling and a love, 
That had no need of a remoter charm, 
By thought supplied, nor any interest 
Unborrowed from the eye.' x 

Yet Wordsworth could not himself trace this passion to 
its root in the far-off years of childhood. What a fascinat- 
ing revelation it would be had some trained observer by 
his side laid bare to us in detail the first steps of that path 
by which his mind attained communion with the ' spirit 
that impels 

' All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things.' 

In the scientific works to which I have referred above 
we learn much about the development of perception and 
memory, of the gradual recognition of form and of colour, 

1 ' Lines on Tintern Abbey.' 



INTRODUCTORY 3 

of the appreciation of number, and of the acquisition of 
language. Yet owing to the fact that most observers seem 
to have ceased their work either before or soon after their 
subject has attained the age of three, we are left in ignorance 
of the way in which are built up those more or less stable 
sentiments and interests which go to constitute the mind of 
the adult. 

Much light has been thrown on this problem by the work 
of Freud and Jung. But many studies of normal children 
are required before we shall be able to generalise with 
confidence. 

Professor Ray Lankester has said, ' We boldly operate 
upon the minds of our children in our systems of education 
without really knowing what we are doing. . . . We know 
the pain and the penalt}^ of muscular fatigue, but we play 
with the brains of young and old as though they were 
indestructible machinery.' 

These words come home to us forcibly when we have 
occasion to examine any of the rickety, crippled, atrophied 
intellects which form the failures of our present schools. 

In the science of medicine we are coming to recognise 
that the first duty of the physician is not to cure disease, 
but to prevent it. 

In the same way the psychologist should not be called 
in after mental injury has taken place ; he should be con- 
sulted in time to prevent injury. Even at the present 
day — imperfect as our knowledge of child psychology still 
is — we have, I think, means at our disposal which would 
enable us at least to do this in all but very exceptional 
cases. , 

Still we want to do more than just to refrain from doing 
harm to the growing mind ; we want to direct it rightly. 
And the more intimately we know it, the more efficiently 
shall we be able to direct it. 

In this book I have attempted to show something of 
the subtle interplay between the educative forces of the 



4 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

environment, physical and social, and the receiving mind of 
the child. The study is based mainly on the close observa- 
tion of one child whose early development I have traced 
in a previous work. My results I have supplemented and 
tested by the observation of children, with whom I have 
been in less intimate association. In the circumstances it 
is inevitable that there should be regrettable omissions. 
For example, Music suffers from the fact that my own 
musical education had not what I consider satisfactory 
results, and also from the fact that Margaret, though six, 
has not yet developed ' tunes in her voice.' 

Religion also is not overtly treated. In this region what 
we teach the child must depend on what we believe our- 
selves, as well as on what he can absorb. If we decide to 
teach him dogma, we must be prepared for the fact that his 
keenly logical mind will see conclusions therein that we are 
not prepared to accept and that we may regard with re- 
pugnance as irreverent. It may be that the wisest way is to 
wait upon his questions, and give him the truth as far as we 
know it. But I am not yet prepared to say anything on 
this subject that has not been said by others. 

Again, the fact that I am with the child only during the 
holidays, that is, roughly for two or three months in the 
year, renders it evident that there is a Margaret of whom 
I know comparatively little. It is true that I naturally 
have the good fortune to hear of her pretty regularly in 
the intervals ; still, it is not possible to do much of one's 
observing through another person's eyes. 

Nevertheless these deficiencies may serve a useful purpose 
if they stimulate others, who are more favourably situated 
than I am, to make them good. 

It is only of recent years that any considerable body of 
women have received a scientific training. It is to such 
women that we must look for scientific studies of childhood. 
Such studies can be made in their fulness only by those 
who are with the child from infancy, who have fed him and 



INTRODUCTORY 5 

nursed him, dressed him and undressed him, trained him 
and attended to all his physical needs. 

I wonder if one can ever hope to know a child unless one 
has bidden him good-night in his cot, and listened to the 
way in which he greets the morning. 

In her charming book, The Sayings of the Children, Lady 
Glenconner says, ' The mother has learned many things 
in the company of these children, but one truth definitely 
is hers, and it is that her children teach her more than she 
teaches them.' 

He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. 

It would be ungrateful if in this place I did not refer to 
the debt owed by every lover of childhood to Dr. Montessori. 

The method of education which she has devised opens 
wide the doors of freedom to the child. We no longer 
restrain the activity of his limbs by swaddling clothes. 
We know that strength and health depend on the free 
exercise of his body. But in most of our schools we still 
attempt to exercise the minds of the children according 
to rule ; we ignore their individuality and strive to turn 
them out all of one pattern. Nature of course laughs our 
attempts to scorn. We cannot do what we set out to do. 
But the children suffer. 

At one time many people thought that the freedom 
advocated by Dr. Montessori would result in noise, disorder, 
and destruction. We have only to look into any happy 
nursery where a large amount of freedom is always allowed 
to see that this is not the case. As a matter of fact most 
children have no desire to destroy things ; many of them 
have a passion for order and rejoice in what is dainty and 
beautiful. 

With respect to the little children under her care a 
lecturer on the Montessori system once said, ' We don't 
teach our children to love one another ; we just let them 
do it,' 



6 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

With love in the schoolroom, order is a matter of course. 
The Montessori children have emerged from the bondage 
of the law to the freedom of the spirit. Courtesy and 
loving kindness are the source of all discipline worthy of 
the name ; and these Dr. Montessori takes for granted. 

A much more important question is whether the method 
really promotes intellectual growth. Evidence with regard 
to this must be sought in the schoolroom. I hope that 
my experiment with the grammar material reported in 
Chapter vi. will throw some light on what actually goes on 
in the mind of the child while he is using the material. 

I should have welcomed an opportunity of experimenting 
in the same way with the number material. It would have 
been a privilege to watch the gradual efflorescence of the 
child's intellect and her joy in acquiring the secrets hidden 
in the attractive material. I have not yet enjoyed this 
privilege, but in handling the number material myself, 
in actually working with the ingenious bead frame, in doing 
Long Division in the concrete, I felt a fascination which must 
be enormously greater in the child. In ordinary methods 
of teaching arithmetic it is the teacher who pushes the 
child away from the concrete, when she thinks he ought 
to be ready ; in the Montessori system it is the child 
who gradually and almost imperceptibly rises above the 
concrete when he no longer needs its support. By the 
time the child in our schools has reached Long Division 
he has long since left the concrete behind, and too often 
he has also given up the idea that he need have any clear 
understanding of what he is doing. The Montessori child 
on the other hand need make no attempt to soar into the 
abstract until his wings have grown ; yet from the very begin- 
ning he sets down all his results on paper, so that he is able 
to take a trial flight whenever he chooses, and whenever he 
chooses he can once more claim the assistance of the con- 
crete. No one hurries him ; no one clouds his thoughts. 
He is free to meditate. Also the time required for handling 



INTRODUCTORY 7 

the material favours meditation, and prevents that haste 
in consumption which produces mental, just as it produces 
physical, indigestion. 

Many of our best educationists hesitate to adopt the 
Montessori system, because it rests upon rigidly defined 
material. They fear that this will result in rigidity of 
teaching ; that all life will be lost. One may admit that 
material which has to be used in a certain definite way does 
lie open to this danger, if it is to be used by unintelligent 
people. But I must say that in the case of the Montessori 
material I think this danger is practically negligible. 

We must remember that one of the fundamental principles 
of the method precludes any child from being compelled 
to make use of the material. Again, the teacher's part is 
limited to the introduction of the material at the right 
moment. She has, as it were, to show the child how to 
play, to give him the rules of the game, and then leave him 
to acquire skill himself. No one thinks of complaining of 
the deadening effect of tennis or football, because the 
material used is strictly defined. 

The material as given to us by Dr. Montessori is such as 
to suggest in detail each step in the progress of thought. 
Yet -the material is of no use without the teacher ; it is she 
' who has to live and make live.' ' Her delicate work of 
intervention is a task hard enough in itself ' ; and therefore 
she ' should be relieved as much as possible of the delicate 
labour of preparation and research.' ' When we ask a 
teacher to respond to the needs of the inner life of man, 
we are asking a great deal of her. She will never be able 
to accomplish it unless we have first done something for 
her by giving her all that is necessary for that end.' 1 

The Montessori teacher requires not only the faith and 

the patience and the vision of the scientist, but she requires 

a deep knowledge and a philosophic appreciation of number 

and language. Under the direction of such a teacher and 

1 The Advanced Montessori Method, ii. p. 47. 



8 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

with the aid of the material the process that goes on within 
the child's mind will take its place with all natural growth 
processes. It will appear as an evolution from within. 
The child's mind will be a unity, and all his knowledge will 
be instinct with life. I do not see how in this system 
absolute failures would be possible. It is true that all 
may not attain the stature of the oak, but all would be free 
to attain perfection after their kind. Confusion of mind, 
the arch-enemy of the teacher, would be banished . Bounded 
by themselves, and undistracted by the fever of some 
differing soul , the children would be free to concentrate all 
their powers on their own tasks — tasks prescribed by 
themselves, by their own passion for knowledge, a passion 
which exists more or less in every infant, but in 
many cases is stifled by education instead of being 
fostered. 

The ordinary methods of education are not amenable 
to the nature of the child. They do not even yield them- 
selves to that mode of work which is most congenial to us 
all. Like most of us the child naturally works on the 
intensive method. He likes to go at a thing. This ten- 
dency of his does not, I think, depend on the fact that he 
thus sees his own progress. But no doubt this does have 
some effect in confirming his method of work. 

This characteristic of the child receives little encourage- 
ment in the ordinary school where we must do so much 
reading, so much writing, so much arithmetic every day, 
and where we have to cease work not because we require 
time to assimilate what we have been taking in, but because 
the bell has sounded. 

My class of little people were working at Geography. 
' There 's the bell,' said I. ' That beast of a bell,' said 
Lilian. I fear discipline was never my strong point. Still 
I felt the need of a protest. ' Oh, Lilian, Lilian, you 
mustn't say that ! Besides, the bell isn't a beast.' ' It 
is,' said she, ' when I 'm engaged on geography.' 



INTRODUCTORY 9 

After all, is this not the true spirit of the student ? When 
one's heart is in some piece of work, one knows that one 
of the delights of a holiday is that now one feels one can 
go ahead with no outside claims to drag one's thoughts 
aside from their chosen path. The passion for study caused 
Prospero to find his library a dukedom large enough, and 
to grow a stranger to his state ; and this capacity for 
absorption is, I think, a universal characteristic of the 
little child. One of the factors in the great progress made 
by children educated on Montessori lines, is that the method 
makes use of this tendency instead of ignoring it and 
trampling it down. 

In the primary school at Muzzano, near Lugano, a school 
conducted on Montessori principles, there was a boy who 
would do nothing but read for days and days. One of 
his schoolmates wrote on the blackboard, ' Giovanni does 
nothing but read ; when and how will he learn arithmetic ? ' 
Giovanni replied, still by means of the blackboard, ' It is 
quite true that I do nothing but read, but when I do start 
arithmetic I shall catch you all up with a bound ' (con un 
salto di canguro). And this, in fact, was what happened. 

In this country, even under the present system of educa- 
tion, this characteristic of our nature sometimes comes to 
its own. When I was at school I knew four girls who 
wished to take an examination in German, usually taken 
by pupils who had had a 3^ear's more instruction in the 
subject than they had. For this they had to be prepared 
to translate from a prescribed book. A teacher kindly 
found time to go over their translation with them once a 
week. For this lesson they used to prepare just as much 
as they liked. They used to do perhaps twenty or thirty 
pages, an amount which certainly far surpassed anything 
that a teacher would ever have thought of prescribing. 
These four girls all took a higher place in the examination 
than their companions in the ordinary class. Of the four 
one had a special aptitude for languages ; the others had 



10 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

not. What had carried them forward was the simple fact 
that the propelling force was within. 

It was at school also that I knew another girl, to 
whom it was suggested in spring that she should take 
Honours Mathematics in the Leaving Certificate Examina- 
tions then held in July. This would involve ' getting up ' 
Conic Sections and Dynamics, of which she knew nothing. 
She accepted the challenge, took the examination, and 
passed in both subjects, gaining distinction in Dynamics. 
She received absolutely no help, did not sit up late — a 
practice which would not have been allowed ; she did not 
injure her health, nor did her ordinary school work suffer. 
Most of the preparation she gave to Dynamics was during 
one of the holiday weeks, when she almost literally did 
nothing else. 

When I became a teacher, I had a pupil who had gone in 
for and passed with credit an examination in Physical 
Geography. She told me she had done the work pre- 
scribed for this entirely by herself, and had never enjoyed 
anything so much in all her life. 

A few facts such as I have given would, I think, be of 
value to educationists, for it would encourage us to allow 
the children to take their own studies a little more into 
their own hands. 

As soon as a child can read, he should be able to teach 
himself anything he desires to know. The teacher's 
function should largely be to act as a finger-post in the 
wilderness of text -books, and also as a guiding-star to 
inspire the child, and to illumine for him the far-off hills of 
knowledge. Group lessons should aim at culture, at en- 
joyment, not at the mere imparting of facts. Once I 
had a mathematical master. When a pupil offered him a 
particularly neat solution of a geometrical problem, he 
would spend a few moments sitting sideways on the desk 
with his back to most of the class, contemplating it ; finally 
his thought would emerge in the form, ' Very pretty, very 



INTRODUCTORY 11 

pretty indeed.' Perhaps this was as good a lesson as I 
ever received. This aesthetic side of mathematics is often 
not enough cultivated. 

For young students study needs to be vitalised by human 
emotions. 

Speaking of his own University life, Francis Darwin 
says : ' A course I thoroughly liked was that given by the 
late Sir George Humphry, Professor of Anatomy. He used 
to sit balancing himself on a stool with his great hungry 
eyes fixed on us, talking in plain direct terms of anatomy 
enlivened by physiology. The one point that remains with 
me is the way he would stop and wonder over the facts he 
brought before us ; " This is a wonderful thing, one of the 
most wonderful things in the world. I know nothing 
about it — no one knows — you had better try and find out 
some of you." Simple words enough, but they struck the 
chord of romance in some of his hearers.' 

This is perhaps the most important function of the 
teacher, to strike the chord of romance, to awaken the 
unresting and adventurous spirit which according to 
Lessing would prefer the search for truth even to the 
possession of truth. 

When one thinks over facts like those given above, 
especially when one has had the privilege of intimate 
contact with the shining intellectual life of an unspoiled 
child, one sympathises with the outburst of Oswald 
Sydenham. ' Education,' he says, ' might be the greatest 
power in the world. . . . Give me the schools of the world, 
and I would make a Millennium in half a century. . . . We 
don't make half of what we could make of our children. 
We don't make a quarter — not a tenth. They could know 
ever so much more, think ever so much better. We are 
all at sixes and sevens.' * 

To some this may read like hyperbole. It is the plainest 
matter of fact. 

1 Joan and Peter, by H. G. Wells. 



12 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 
CHAPTER II 

MENTAL AGE 

The conception of mental age is one which it is very im- 
portant that all teachers should fully understand. 

We are all perfectly aware that we can easily teach an 
older child much that it would be perfectly impossible to 
teach a younger child no matter how long we talked, and 
no matter how clearly we expounded our theme. 

I once spent a very profitable ten minutes with Margaret 
when a baby of about nine months. She had a rattle which 
was often hung on to the knob of her cot. When she 
wished to get it, she would hammer it promiscuously till 
she succeeded in knocking it off. On the particular morn- 
ing in question she had done this. I took hold of the rattle. 
' No, baby,' I said, ' not that way. This is the way.' I 
put the rattle on the knob, slowly moved it till the loop- 
handle was conveniently arranged and then lifted it off. I 
put it on again and said, ' Now, baby, you do it.' Baby 
grinned cheerfully, hammered vigorously at the rattle and 
in course of time knocked it oft' as before. I did not lose 
patience. I felt I was receiving a valuable lesson and I 
wanted it to sink deep. I picked up the rattle, put it on 
the knob, and once more with great deliberation showed 
the child how to perform the task. I then indicated the 
time had come for her to show how she had profited by 
the lesson. She ignored it. Once more she knocked off 
the rattle in her own wasteful, destructive, unscientific 
manner. 

My lesson was a good one. It was not my fault it had 
not gone home. I might have repeated it indefinitely with 
no more success, for a year's growth was required before 
the child could profit by it. 



MENTAL AGE 13 

I am reminded of this incident often when teachers tell 
me how patiently they have laboured to teach a child the 
difference between an adjective and an adverb, or the fact 
that two and two make four. 

Margaret of course carried her mental age written on her 
face. Any one who had seen me would, I suppose, have 
said I was mad to expect a baby to learn in that way. The 
children with whom the teachers are dealing do not carry 
their mental age written on their face ; yet it is equally 
vain to attempt to teach them in five minutes, or an hour, 
or two hours, what requires a year's growth. 

' I kept that boy in for half an hour yesterday,' says a 
conscientious teacher, ' trying to make him understand 
what is the subject of a sentence, and it was quite useless.' 
' Worse than useless,' I feel inclined to reply. ' You 
wasted your own valuable time and nervous energy, and 
you probably did a positive harm to the child by deepening 
the impression already no doubt formed in him that the 
mysteries of grammar are beyond his understanding.' 

But I have done the same kind of thing myself in my 
time, and the belief that we can teach, independently of the 
capacity of the subject to receive instruction, is not one 
that can be combated by words alone. 

This belief, which causes the waste of an appalling 
amount of valuable time in our schools and produces an 
even more appalling amount of friction and unhappiness, 
rests upon the unformulated hypothesis that chronological 
age, mental age, and physical age all increase with equal 
step. 

This hypothesis has merely to be formulated to be denied. 
We know, teachers say, that a boy may be mentally 
backward for his age just as he may be undersized. 

Then why not act upon your knowledge ? Why not find 
out if a child is mentally old enough to profit- before you 
attempt to force upon him instruction which is obviously 
distasteful ? 



14 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

How interesting it would be for us teachers if a wizard 
would transform our classes so that each member looked 
his mental age and not his physical one. Here in the 
baby class we should see sensible little people of seven 
taking their place with many six-year-olds, normal five- 
year-olds and babies of four and three. Would we then 
attempt to teach them all alike ? Would we insult the 
intelligence of the seven-year-old with a lesson suitable for 
the four-year-old ? Would we bore the four-year-old with 
matter that would rejoice the seven-year-old ? 

Thanks to the work of Binet and Simon and a devoted 
band of followers the determination of a child's mental age 
is now a comparatively easy matter. 

To say whether a child is normal for his age or not, we 
require first of all a standard. We cannot properly say 
that a child is below average in height or weight or any 
other quality till we have established the average. This 
is done by taking a large number of unselected children, 
measuring the quality under investigation in each of them, 
recording it, and finally in the ordinary way computing 
the average. The larger the number of children taken 
and the more widely distributed they are over the country 
that they represent, the more accurate is our result. For 
certain purposes we may of course select our children. 
Thus a middle - class parent would rather compare the 
weight of his child with an average obtained from a number 
of middle -class children than with one which was based on 
a study that included slum children. He would rightly 
feel that the latter average might give a false idea of what 
he should expect in his child. 

Of course the very notion of an average implies that 
approximately as many people must be below it as above 
it, but no one wants his child to be among the former set. 

Now in this world of ours qualities, such as height, 
weight, and others, are distributed in a very interesting 
way. 



MENTAL AGE 15 

We all know by our casual observation that we are more 
likely to meet people who are about the average height 
than people who are very tall or very short. As regards 
height, most of us are ' much of a muchness.' Now it is 
quite possible to imagine a world in which this is not so — 
a world in which one would meet an extremely short 
person just as often as one met a middle-sized person and 
as often as one met an extremely tall person. If in such a 
world we were to take a few thousand unselected men and 
measure their heights and arrange our results in groups 
containing all individuals whose height fell between certain 
equidistant points on the scale, then we should find that all 
the groups were approximately equal. That is to say, if 
our shortest man was five feet in height, and we agreed 
that our first group should contain all men between five 
feet and five feet one inch, then there would be just as 
many men in this group as in any other similarly formed 
group. If we were to plot out our results in graphic form, 
setting out our scale on a base line and allowing vertical 
lines to represent the number in each group, we should 
find that by joining the tops of those verticals we should 
get a curve approximating to a straight line. 

Our world, as we know, is not constructed in this way. 
But if we actually measure heights and set out our results 
as above, we come upon an extremely interesting fact. 
The curve we obtain is not of course a straight line, but it 
is symmetrical. Here for example is a curve obtained by 
measuring 8585 British men and plotting the results as 
described (Fig. 1). It will be seen that the group of men 
measuring between 67 and 68 inches is the most numerous, 
that there is a gradual decrease in the size of the groups 
as the representative measurements become either greater 
or less, and that this decrease is such that the curve is 
approximately symmetrical about a middle line. Science 
thus confirms our ordinary observation with regard to the 
way in which such a quality as height is distributed, and 



16 



FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 



amplifies it in this extraordinarily impressive and beautiful 
way. 

Other qualities, which, like height, occur in an infinite 
number of gradations between certain definite limits, are 
found, when actual measurements are taken, to give a 





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Fig. 1. 
MEASUREMENTS OF 8585 BRITISH MEN. 

From Heredity, by J. A. S. Watson, B.Sc. 
Jack's 'People's Books.' 

curve resembling that shown above. The greater the 
number of cases examined the greater the regularity of the 
curve. A bell-shaped curve like this is now known as the 
Normal Curve of Variation (Fig. 2). 

Now intelligence is a quality which in many respects 
appears to behave like height and weight. Intelligence 
is infinitely variable : there are all degrees of it. Again its 
extremes are rare : geniuses are few, idiots are few : most 
of us appear to cluster close about a certain mean. Where 
we can measure certain forms of intelligence, as by ex- 



MENTAL AGE 17 

animation marks, it is found that results give approximately 
the normal curve of variation. 

Examinations are of course not pure intelligence tests. 
They test memory, knowledge, capability of expressing 
oneself, and many other qualities, which may to some 
extent certainly be included in intelligence as the word is 
commonly used. But it is generally admitted, if we wish 




Fig. 2. 
THE NORMAL CURVE OF VARIATION. 

to test intelligence, we require something different from 
the examination as ordinarily conducted. 

Moreover we require to establish an age norm. Even 
people who have considerable experience with children have 
no very certain criterion as to the ability of the average child. 

Method of Establishing a Norm. — The idea of creating 
a scale by means of which to measure intelligence we owe 
to the genius of Binet, the brilliant French psychologist. 
The work that he did has now been very much amplified ; 
the Scale of Intelligence that he and Dr. Simon produced 
has been extended and adjusted by various workers, and 
in its present form is a very satisfactory and informative 
instrument . 

Recently in America there have been published two 
books, The Stanford Revision and Extension of the Binet- 
Simon Scale for Measuring Intelligence, and The Measure- 



18 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

merit of Intelligence, an Explanation of and a Complete 
Guide for the use of the Stanford Revision and Extension of 
the Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale. 

No one who wishes to use the Scale can afford to do 
without this second book. 

The general idea of the Scale is this : that there are 
certain capacities, and certain pieces of knowledge that 
the child of average intelligence should possess at a certain 
age, and that it should be possible to discover that age. In 
the Scale we find set down for the different school ages 
a series of questions which normal children who have 
attained that age should be able to answer. 

The Stanford Revision, which is the culmination of 

several years' work by Professor Terman and his colleagues 

at Stanford University, is based on results obtained from 

about a thousand school children. The answers to the 

tests given by these children were worked over so that the 

Scale might adequately represent the grades of intelligence 

found in them. The children tested were all within two 

months of a birthday, so that the age groups did not shade 

into one another. In arranging the tests the object kept 

in view was to grade them so that the median Intelligence 

Quotient should approximate to 100, the Intelligence 

Quotient of any child being defined as his mental age 

divided by his chronological age and multiplied by 100. 

Thus if a child of nine years of age tests at nine years of age 

his I.Q. would be 100 ; if he tested at ten, his I.Q. would 

u m xw 10X100 

be 111, that is 1 — . 

9 

These statements will become clearer if we consider 

one of the graphs given by Professor Terman. Let us 

take that showing the distribution of the I.Q.'s of 79 

unselected eleven -year-olds (Fig. 3). The median is at 98. 

This means that if we arranged these 79 children in order of 

intelligence as represented by their I.Q.'s we should find 

that the middle child had an I.Q. of 98 — that is, ap- 



MENTAL AGE 19 

proximately 100, as required by theory. We see too from 
the form of the curve that the distribution of intelligence 
thus measured conforms to the normal curve of variation. 
Most of the children are grouped closely about the average. 
The groups are smaller as we descend or as we ascend the 
Scale, and the stupid children and the clever children 
almost exactly balance one another. 



i — — r 



56-65 66-75 76-85 86-95 96-105 106-115 116-1Z5 126-135 136-145 

Fig. 3. 

DISTRIBUTION OF INTELLIGENCE QUOTIENTS OF 
79 UNSELECTED ELEVEN-YEAR-OLDS. 

In testing a child we usually begin with the tests assigned 
to the year below his age and carry him on as far as there 
seems any prospect of his being able to go. We then 
compute his mental age by crediting him with the year at 
which he has passed all the tests, and with a proportion of 
a year for every test he passes above that level. 

In order to put the tests properly one must study very 
carefully the directions given in Professor Terman's Guide 
and abide very closely by them. 

In this book when I speak of mental age I have in view 
mental age as determined by this Scale. 

When the value and the possibility of testing intelligence 
come to be realised, and when arrangements are made for 
testing on a large scale, it will mean an enormous saving of 
time, patience, and money. 



20 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

It is well known that psychological tests were extensively 
applied in the American army. The value of these tests 
proved itself so quickly that in the Official Bulletin of 22nd 
January 1919 it was announced that ' the Chief of Staff 
has approved the recommendation of the Surgeon -General 
for the extension of the psychological examination to all 
enlisted men, and all newly appointed officers of the Army, 
and has approved plans for carrying out these examinations.' 

The Commander of a division, General Cronkhite, 
stated in an interview : ' It may be revolutionary, but the 
psychiatric Board's intelligence tests will play a great part 
in this division. These tests are virtually conclusive ; 
they have proved so in thousands of cases. And men 
who show a high intelligence rating will be watched closely 
— will be given every chance for advancement. Their 
daily work will be taken into consideration, and if they 
deserve promotion they will get it. This is the programme 
from top to bottom, officer and private.' 

Some of the results of the psychological examination 
will be surprising to those who have not gone into this 
question. Between 27th April and 30th November 1918 
there were reported 4744 men with mental age below seven 
years ; 7762 between seven and eight years ; 14,566 be- 
tween eight and nine ; 18,581 between nine and ten — that 
is, altogether 45,653 men who were possessed of intelligence 
less than that of an average child of ten years of age. 

It is quite clear that to spend money on elaborate training 
and equipment for these men would be pure waste. Yet 
many of them no doubt could do valuable work ; it is 
quite possible that many of them were physically strong 
and could be of real use in labour battalions ; and in such 
battalions if allowance were made in an amiable and 
friendly way for their mental peculiarities the men might 
be perfectly happy. 

There is some evidence to show that the Intelligence 
Quotient remains fairly constant for the individual. Further 



MENTAL AGE 21 

experimentation is desirable here ; but it may safely be 
said if a child has an I.Q. of 120 or more that child has a 
mind which is worthy of the best kind of education ; 
whereas if a child has an I.Q. of 80 or less, there is little 
use in worrying him with abstract instruction, which will 
only confuse his dull mind, and render him unhappy. 

In Little Dorrit Dickens has depicted for us in Maggy one 
type of the child that never grows up. For such children 
we are now forming special schools and special classes, and 
in time I suppose there will be farm colonies and institutions 
where such as Maggy can be taken care of. Yet the 
American results indicate that there must be many people 
who with the intelligence of a child are struggling along in a 
world that must often prove too much for them. Much 
of the education they have received has been over their 
heads and has therefore done them more harm than good. 
The money thus spent has been worse than wasted. Had 
their intelligence been estimated in their early childhood 
and had they received an education suited to it, they would 
both have been happier and have proved more profitable 
citizens. 

What part, I wonder, do these concealed children take 
in the affairs of the country ? Are any to be found on 
Town Councils, on Education Authorities, in Parliament 
itself ? It is not likely. But if the wizard I have imagined 
above were to stand at the door of the polling-booth, and 
transform the voters so that their appearance revealed 
their mental age, we might have an interesting light shed 
on the way in which the destinies of an Empire are supposed 
to be determined. 

In the Stanford Revision the tests for ' average adult ' 
and ' superior adult ' were standardised on the basis of 
results obtained from 400 adults. Among them were 
30 uneducated business men. Of these 15 tested at 
' average adult,' 8 at ' superior adult,' 6 at ' inferior adult,' 
and 1 at thirteen years. According to the scale average 



22 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

young people of fifteen to seventeen years of age should 
test at ' average adult,' those from seventeen to nineteen 
at superior adult. Of 32 high -school students, who were 
sixteen years of age or over, 22 tested at ' average adult,' 
5 at ' superior adult,' and 5 at ' inferior adult.' 

The question might be raised whether a university should 
open its doors to any one who fell below average adult level. 

We need not, however, concern ourselves only with those 
who are below average intelligence. In some ways the 
case of those who are above average intelligence is more 
pressing both for their sake and the sake of the country. 
At our present stage of civilisation, intelligence, however 
great, cannot rise to the height of which it is capable 
without suitable education in the plastic period of youth. 
Many of our self-made men are no doubt persons of very 
high intelligence, yet their lives are not as complete as they 
ought to be, because they have not had the advantages 
they ought to have had at the right time. 

I remember seeing a year or two ago that one of our 
labour leaders in referring to some taunts of his opponents 
which described him as a man of no education, had said 
that no one knew that better than himself ; and then he 
utterly broke down. Surging up from the unconscious 
had come the hardships and the struggles and the dis- 
appointments of his childhood, and all in a moment had 
swept his virility aside. This is a tragedy. And it is a 
tragedy that science should not now permit. Children of 
superior intelligence, no matter to what social station they 
belong, should be encouraged to aim at places of responsi- 
bility and power — not of course for their own sake, but for 
the sake of the country — and all that school or university 
can do for them in the way of education should be done. 

Terman speaks of children who have an Intelligence 
Quotient between 120 and 140 as being of very superior 
intelligence. It is sometimes imagined that these very 
clever children are apt to be nervous, delicate, or peculiar 



MENTAL AGE 23 

in some way or other. This idea does not accord with 
facts. When giving lectures on the tests to the teachers' 
institutes, Professor Terman made a practice of asking for 
the brightest child in the city or county as a subject for 
demonstration. In such circumstances he usually got an 
I.Q. between 130 and 140. These children he finds as 
a general rule to be as superior physically and morally 
as they are intellectually. They are generally favourites 
with their companions and indeed with every one who 
knows them. 

In school the very bright children are almost always 
advanced for their age, but yet are doing work which is 
easier for them than it ought to be. 

This waste of the precious years of youth should not be 
allowed to continue. 

By this time I have, I suppose, tested not less than a 
hundred children with the Binet Scale, which I began to 
use some ten years ago ; and naturally I have tested 
Margaret more than once. 

I find that when I make a statement to a teacher friend 
about the education of little children, she sometimes says, 
' But you must not generalise from your little niece, or expect 
to obtain from other children what you obtain from her.' 

As a matter of fact I find I can generalise from Margaret 
perfectly well by making allowance for mental age, and for 
certain differences in upbringing and environment. As 
one would expect, Margaret's intelligence is above average, 
as is also that of most children of her class who have been 
surrounded by cultural influences from babyhood. 

But in the beginners' class in the elementary school one 
meets also many children of superior intelligence who 
would respond as Margaret does to work which would make 
a real demand upon their powers. These children should 
be given vision ; the path to ' King's treasuries ' should be 
made plain before them, and we need have no doubt but 
they would walk thereon. 



24 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 
CHAPTER III 

THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

' It is more important to have had a good past than to be 
able to recall it.' 

A considerable number of years ago I read these words 
in an American work on memory. They are words which 
repay meditation. We are apt to think that after we have 
forgotten an experience, it cannot much matter one way or 
another. A child has had a painful experience which after 
a time passes completely from his memory. He never 
speaks of it, never thinks of it. It has gone from his life. 
It is, we think, the same as if it had never been. 

Modern psychology is proving more clearly every day how 
fatally mistaken is this belief. The numerous cases of 
psychic disturbance brought about by shell shock have been 
proved again and again not to be entirely the product of 
what appeared to be the cause, but to be grounded in some 
mental injury or pain suffered by the sensitive mind of the 
child and long since forgotten by the subject. In other 
words the modern trouble is rooted in the unconscious. 

Much has recently been heard of the unconscious mind, 
and to many people the expression seems a contradiction 
in terms. Nevertheless the phrase, whether a good one or 
not, stands for a number of important facts, and it is with 
these facts I am at present concerned. 

Perhaps the simplest way to approach them is to ask 
ourselves what are the contents of the unconscious mind. 

In the first place we have all the material which we could 
call up into consciousness, but which is not there at present. 
My knowledge of French, of German, of Geography has at 
present no conscious existence because I am not thinking 
about it. This material, as we all know, is not absolutely 



THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND 25 

at our command. For example I am often unable to recall 
a foreign word, although I am sure I know it. For this 
inability there are often psychological causes. There are 
at work within my mind repressing factors of which I am 
unaware. 

In the second place there are memories which we cannot 
voluntarily recall, but which special circumstances may 
bring back to us. Sometimes such memories can be 
revived in hypnosis. 

Of such memories some at least have not been allowed 
just to slip away into oblivion, but have been definitely 
'pushed into oblivion, because they are unpleasing to us. 
Such memories are said to be repressed. They are not 
gone altogether ; they may continue to affect our conduct 
in ways which we do not understand. They are, for 
example, often responsible for certain acts which appear 
to ourselves and to others to be meaningless. In particular 
they are often responsible for certain compulsive acts or 
for certain obsessive ideas. 

Besides these contents of the unconscious there seems to 
be a deeper stratum still which some writers have called the 
' primitive.' This material, according to the doctrine of the 
Zurich school, is not derived from individual experience 
at all but from racial experience. It finds expression in the 
myths of all ages and nations ; it causes us to offer sacrifices, 
to bestow fair names on what we fear, to animate nature 
with the life we feel pulsating in ourselves. The language 
of this stratum of the unconscious is not that of science 
but of poetry. It guides the work of the artist, the in- 
spiration of the poet ; it sees in all things symbols of the 
deepest life of man. 

The ways of thinking determined by the primitive 
unconscious resemble the ways of acting which we call 
instincts. They are manifested most plainly in childhood. 
Our developed self often dislikes and denies them ; yet they 
remain in us and form one source of the conflict which 



26 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

destroys the happiness of so many lives. We may thrust 
them into the unconscious and forget that they ever 
played a part in determining our conduct ; yet in symbolic 
form they find expression in our dreams, and when resistance 
is weakened by illness or shock, they may storm the citadel. 

Primitive interests and primitive modes of thinking 
find freest expression in the child before social pressure has 
been brought very strongly to bear upon him. The little 
child inhabits the garden of Eden, and is able openly to 
rejoice in himself as Nature has made him. He is, until he 
is taught better, frankly interested in the great mystery 
of life and in the functions of all living things. But he 
readily learns there are some things about which we speak, 
if at all, only to our mothers or those nearest to us. This 
amount of social repression does, I think, no harm. But 
certain children are subjected to severer repression than this. 
The adults with whom they associate are, because of their 
own psychic history, honestly shocked at the little ones' 
questions, and the questioners are quick to feel this, quick 
to feel that there is a mystery here which they are not 
supposed to probe. 

In these matters the child should always be met on the 
tableland of science. He should be told the truth as far 
as he can understand. It is easy to impress upon him — 
primitive man knew this well — that there are things so 
sacred that we do not speak of them lightly. If the 
inquiries of the child are simply suppressed, especially 
if they are suppressed with a certain amount of emotional 
reaction, then a division in the personality is apt to arise. 
Meredith uses in one of his novels the strong expression 
' men of murdered halves.' The danger is not so much 
when the half is murdered as when it is only partially 
suffocated. It lurks in the unconscious and gathers 
strength for occasional upheavals into the conscious, up- 
heavals which are often incomprehensible and hateful to 
the cultured personality. 



THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND 27 

Our aim in education is not to suppress the primitive — 
a proceeding which robs its possessor of strength and may 
lead to conflict so severe that adaptation to life may 
become impossible — but to sublimate the primitive ten- 
dencies so that they may find an expression which is in 
accordance with our modern social ideas. 

The primitive expresses itself in the child's natural 
turn for forms and ceremonies. It teaches him to regard 
all things as made after his own image — as symbols. 

A class of small children were once making a map of 
England. As one of them put the sign for the meridian 
of Greenwich, 0°, 'Mother and child,' she said, and gave a 
little laugh. This is a very characteristic ebullition of the 
unconscious. 

In the Free Kindergarten one day I saw the same idea 
expressed by the Montessori cylinders — the ones which 
differ in height. A little girl arranged them so that beside 
each tall cylinder stood a short one. The interpretation 
was clear. ' Mother and child ' again. 

If you were asked to fetch something from another 
room, you would not, as a rational person, find that it would 
add to your joy in the commission to have it couched in the 
following terms : ' Run to the foot of the stairs, go slowly 
up to the drawing-room, when you reach the middle of the 
room jump three times, go to the table and bow once to 
the right and once to the left, then take the red book you 
will see lying there, and come back to me as quickly as 
you can.' Yet Margaret would receive such commands 
with shining eyes, and would even come to me to have a 
commonplace request translated into this language of 
mystery. 

One knows how easily ritual establishes itself in a child's 
life. Certain ceremonies and a certain order must be 
observed in connection with his dressing and undressing, 
his meals and all the other events of his life. The strong 
attraction that the Roman Catholic Church possesses for 



28 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

many minds springs partly from the primitive in our 
nature. 

The child needs no teaching to make him realise the 
potency of ceremony. In all the realm of magic he finds 
himself at home. 

One day we had some friends coming to supper and had 
to extend the table. I said to Margaret we would do 
' a magic,' and she would see the table grow bigger. I took 
the key with appropriate gestures, and proceeded to turn it. 
The child was greatly excited during the process and a 
little frightened. She rushed off to 'Nana,' shouting, 
' The table 's walking along with its skin off ; it 's showing 
its inside ; — it 's showing its bones.' The event made a 
deep impression on her. Three months later she told me I 
was going to get a surprise when I came to table, and she 
added in a very knowing manner, ' Perhaps you think 
I 'm going to wind it up and make it walk, but I 'm not.' 

One can make use of this tendency in the child. 
Margaret's mother was once complaining of her forget - 
fulness of some injunction ; it just went ' in at one ear and 
out at the other.' ' Come here,' I said to her ; ' I '11 put 
it in so that it won't come out.' So I put one hand over 
her right ear and spoke very distinctly and impressively into 
her left. Two or three days later she said spontaneously, 
' I still remember that thing you put between my ears.' 

At the same time this part of the child's nature is not 
a part one would wish to cultivate. Its thoughtless en- 
couragement often leads to sorrow and disappointment 
and even disaster. It is the part to which fairy stories 
make their appeal ; the passion of many children for these 
tales may be attributed to the fact that the primitive in 
themselves stirs in responsive movement. 

' The later events of life . . . owe a large portion of their 
power for harm to the fact that they reproduce in new 
shape old emotional excesses and limitations, of childish 
form and childish substance. Children love fairy stories, 



THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND 29 

and love to invent them for themselves ; and they often 
go on — still as children, more mature in years, but still 
immature in fact — telling themselves fairy stories to the 
end of time.' * 

In these fairy tales of ours people are puppets for our use. 
Few of us ever take the trouble even to try to see people as 
they really are. If we did we should mark their incon- 
sistencies and their failures with a more sympathetic eye. 
We should know of their struggles, their blind wrestling 
with themselves. We should know how deeply true are 
Meredith's lines : 

* In tragic life, God wot, 
No villain need be ! Passion spins the plot : 
We are betrayed by what is false within.' 

It is only the chosen few who in this brief life can tame and 
turn to use the dragon forces which draw their sustenance 
from unrecorded time. 

The egoism of the child — an egoism which is not to be 
called selfish — is pandered to in the worst way by many 
fairy stories. The hero, with whom the child identifies 
himself, obtains success not by hard work or by his own 
virtue, but by magic aid, by good luck, or, worse still, by 
simple cunning. Everything falls out for his glorification, 
however little he deserves it. The princess is taken to 
wife by the king, because she cheats him into believing 
she can spin straw into gold. No child that I have heard of 
ever asks what the king did, when he found out the fraud 
that had been practised upon him. And yet one would 
imagine that that was both an obvious and an interesting 
question. 

Stories of the type referred to should be banished from 
our nurseries. 

We know the child will play the part of the hero. Let 
us at least give him heroes worthy of his imitation. The 
1 Human Motives. J. J. Putnam. 



30 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

stories even if absolutely forgotten mould the unconscious 
in such a way that their influence may appear in conduct 
years afterwards. Who knows how many of the gallant 
deeds of the war were due to stories assimilated by our 
boys in their nursery days ? 

Margaret and I have a cycle of stories which centre 
round a child known as Little Mary. Little Mary came 
into being when Margaret was three and a half. Little 
Mary is slightly older than Margaret, but she is also an only 
child, and has doubtless borrowed other characteristics 
from Margaret ; so the latter is probably within her rights 
if she appropriates Little Mary. 

In one of the first of these stories the roses in her garden 
had told Mary that they wanted rain to make them grow. 
That night Mary heard pitter-patter, pitter-patter on the 
window pane. Never shall I forget the intense concentra- 
tion on my baby niece's face as she whispered, ' It was 
rain' 

Later, considerable dramatisation of the Mary stories 
took place, and Margaret threw herself into the character 
with almost more ardour than was good for her. I refused 
to continue the personation during real meal times, as she 
wished. She compromised on, ' Well, I '11 really be Mary, 
and you '11 really be my Nana ; but I '11 call you Auntie, 
and you '11 call me Margaret.' 

One morning she told me, ' I was really Little Mary all 
night, but I p'etended to be Margaret.' 

I have tried to find in Margaret a source of knowledge 
with respect to the beginnings of visual imagery. I asked 
her one day if she ever saw Mary in her head. 'No,' she 
said, ' because I am Little Mary.' 

One snowy morning Margaret was standing at the 
window dreamily watching the swiftly falling flakes. She 
began to murmur, ' Quicker and faster, quicker and faster ' ; 
then after a moment she turned to me and said, ' I was Little 
Mary. Do you remember how she said that, and how 



THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND 31 

Jackie told her to keep away till he shook off the snow ? ' 
It was some three months since that story had been told, 
and I doubt if Margaret could have recalled it voluntarily ; 
the sight of the snowflakes had released the memory. 

Margaret will forget all about the Little Mary stories. 
Indeed already Mary is fading away, as I divert Margaret's 
attention to a higher type of literature ; yet for good or for 
evil Little Mary lives on in Margaret ; and I created Little 
Mary ! 

Can one wonder if there are educators who assert that they 
could make what they liked of a child, if they had full 
control of the first seven years of his life ? 

In a child's spontaneous play, in the chatter that wells 
up without effort or direction on his part, those who have 
eyes to see and who have an intimate knowledge of the 
child's life may obtain, priceless indications of the way in 
which his character is forming. Notes of such chatter 
taken at the time may often throw a vivid light on future 
developments. In them we may obtain insight into the 
formation of these wishes which in riper years often appear 
as overmastering impulses, the source of which is not 
understood. 

My four-year-old niece is playing on the floor with her 
dolls, her bricks, and a dolls' kitchen. We are alone in the 
room. I am writing at the table, apparently paying no 
attention. I hear the following. 

' You 're a mischievous little thing putting your legs 
in my pocket. . . . You naughty girl, you 're not putting 
on your clothes.' 

This was repeated many times with variations in a 
singing voice. 

1 I think I hear her beating up omelettes in the kitchen ; 
she 's not tidying the house. Do you know, Auntie, Mary 
Jane does nothing in our house ? She only cooks. She 
never lays the table or anything. She does nothing. I '11 
tell you, dear, what I think you should do when I 've got 



32 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

you dressed ; I think you should go down and tell the cook 
to tidy the house. I think I '11 make the omelettes ; and 
you should sit down and be very quiet till breakfast. She 's 
a naughty girl, she won't dress herself. I tell her a hundred 
times. Don't you think I 'm bringing her up nicely telling 
her so often and smacking her too ? Everything I tell her 
just goes in at her left ear and out at her right ear. Auntie 's 
not listening to me and I 'm very disappointed. You 
know if I don't tie her up tight, she '11 go and get cold again 
the very next day, the very same cold from the very same 
microbe. I think people are microbes, for they mostly 
have colds. I wouldn't put on so many breeks as you. 
You put about a hundred breeks on them and a hundred 
petticoats. I 'm glad I don't dress you the way you dress 
your dollies, else you 'd be crying. Where 's her outer 
clothes ? Her dress is here, her dress is here, I 've got her 
dress here. Now, you poor doll. You know my dollies 
are very unthoughtful for their dollies. They put on a 
hundred shawls, a hundred petticoats, a hundred breeks . . . 
crying for heat . . . I 'd put you to bed, for you 're a 
naughty girl, I must say. Come on and we '11 go down- 
stairs and say that thing to the cook. . . . Now, you say, 
" Cook, tidy the house, and mother '11 make the omelette." ' 

(Squeaky voice) 'Cook, tidy the house, and mother '11 
make the omelette and I '11 sit very quiet till breakfast. 
You 're not beating that egg right ; you 're not putting 
a pinch of salt in it.' 

' Yes, you 're a good girl ; she 's not doing it right. . . . 
Stove in the wrong place. . . . Now I '11 be cook. It 
wasn't me that was making the omelette. It was Bridget, 
Br-r-r-r-r-idget. Now you make the omelette. Put Bridget 
away. Put her upstairs in that sack. Now, dollie, get 
your book . . . keep you quiet ... I '11 get any book 
for you two monkeys . . . keep you out of mischief, 
while mumma makes the omelette.' (A little crying sound 
is heard.) ' Is that you, you naughty girl ? Don't come 



THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND 33 

in the kitchen. . . . Wait till mumma gets a dish . . . 
puzzles me what to have for a plate, it puzzles me . . . 
attend to what you 're doing, attend, attend, attend to 
what you 're doing . . . there, to keep you out of mischief, 
I '11 put you up. Yes, Bridget, why did you take yourself 
out of that sack ? ' (Faint protests on Bridget's part.) 
1 No, No, No' (very fiercely), 'I'll knock you away 
with this brick that I 'm going to build the house with. I 
knocked her away and she died ' (repeated several times 
as a song) . . . 'dish for the omelette. Divide you with an 
omelette, and divide you with an omelette, and divide you 
with an omelette . . .' — this to each of the family now 
apparently sitting round the table. 

Now this play is full of allusions to the child's own life 
and her own little ambitions. It is perhaps needless to 
say that her own upbringing is not conducted on the lines 
she advocates, but most little girls have fits of harshness 
with their dolls. The reference to the sack puzzled me at 
first, till I suddenly realised that it was derived from the 
expression ' getting the sack,' though I should not have 
thought the little one had ever heard it. It must have 
struck her as a happy way of getting rid of some unwanted 
person. 

I have given this play mainly because it seems to throw 
light on a little incident which happened more than a 
year later. 

We were all in the country, and Margaret had been 
struck with the lovely idea of playing hostess. She rushed 
ahead as we came in from our walk, insisted on us all 
knocking, received us with formal politeness, and con- 
ducted us to our rooms. When the tea bell sounded 
she awaited us in the dining-room. I happened to arrive 
first. She assigned my seat to me ; then seeing her oppor- 
tunity, she rushed to the dish of scrambled eggs, and ' dealed 
them round ' most deftly and seriously. When her mother 
came down a few minutes later Margaret was most anxious 





34 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

to impress upon her that she had really done this, not 
just ' pretencely.' At the time I wondered at the con- 
centrated expression of the child's face as she performed 
the division. It was only when I subsequently happened 
to be looking over some earlier notes that I perceived 
that the act was the gratification of an unconscious wish 
beginning in babyhood. 

' To-day explains yesterday and to-morrow explains 
To-day, but we must wait till the last Day of All to under- 
stand everything.' Equally true is it that Yesterday 
explains To-day, and To-day explains To-morrow, and we 
must look far back to our very early childhood to find the 
beginnings of impulses and prejudices which largely 
determine our conduct to-day. 

In one of his books George Birmingham introduces an 
Irishman who has two great hatreds — one for landlords 
and the other for financiers. But he did not hate financiers 
with anything like the fervour with which he hated land- 
lords. For his hatred of the latter had begun when he was 
a barefoot baby crawling on the mud floor of his father's 
cabin, whereas his hatred of financiers was of comparatively 
modern date ; and one nevers hates anything with real 
intensity unless one has begun to hate it before one is eight 
years old. 

This observation of Birmingham's is psychologically 
sound. Those loves and hates so easily formed in the 
plastic mind of the child and the beliefs arising therefrom 
remain in many cases for life impregnable to the assaults 
of the reason. Nay, they make reason turn traitor to 
itself, and by a process known as rationalisation they 
contrive to masquerade as logical conclusions drawn from 
indisputable premisses. It is in this region that we must 
seek the explanation of the remarkable fact that many 
people honestly hold that their own opinions in politics 
and religion are the only ones tenable by any one who is 
not either a fool or a knave. The heat developed in discus- 



THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND 35 

sions on such subjects is a sure sign that it is our emotional 
much more than our rational nature that is concerned. 

As children grow, their fantasy may express itself in 
other ways. When Margaret wakes in the morning she 
frequently indulges in a monologue before it is time for 
her to get up. One such monologue continued through 
her dressing, and when she came to my room it was still 
going on. It came forth in a chanting tone without any 
pause or hesitation. It purported to be a story of a little 
girl who was setting the tea ; she dressed her little sisters, 
one in a little pink muslin dress, and one in a little white 
muslin dress, and she set pinky beside her on one side, 
and whity beside her on the other side, and she put her 
father beside pinky and her mother beside whity, and she 
poured out a cup of tea and gave it to her mother. And 
so on through all the doings of the day. 

Even the father and mother are just lay figures for the 
energetic little girl to work her will upon. I am told that 
only children are apt to be ' bossy,' and certainly this 
fantasy seems to indicate Margaret's unconscious craving 
for more scope than fortune has assigned her. Possibly 
for an only child some real responsibility is particularly 
desirable. It might be that animal pets would offer a 
solution of the difficulty, but in Margaret's case this has 
not been tried. 

It is a wholesome symptom that a child should welcome 
the signs of his own growth and reach forward with glad 
expectation to maturity. No one should wish to detain 
him in the 'wee baby' stage. Some nervous illnesses 
seem to consist just in a retreat of the personality to the 
sheltered, protected state of the little child. One meets 
the beginnings of such a retreat in the student who looks 
longingly back to her college days, and formulates the 
wish, ' I don't want to be grown up.' 

At each stage we should sympathise with the child's 
advance and encourage in him the forward look. We 



36 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

know the trembling pride with which Baby rises to his feet 
and takes his first tottering steps. Later the small child 
marks as epochs those changes which to him betoken 
his own approach to the status of a man. 

One day at dinner Margaret asked for some more meat, 
— 'just a little.' Her grandfather said he would not think 
of giving her more than a little, as she was a little person, 
* But I am growing,' she responded with great earnestness. 
On meeting her nurse after a long holiday almost the first 
thing she said to her was, ' I 've been sleeping in a big 
bed, Nana.' In similar circumstances she greeted me 
with, ' I can dress myself.' 

At table some one referred to her as a little girl. ' I 'm 
a big girl. Look ! I 've got a knife.' 

Once when examining Kindergarten children I put the 
test question, ' Are you a little girl or a little boy ? ' c I'm 
a big girl,' responded the mite I was addressing. 

When the seven-year-old Alan was out with his father 
the latter noticed a windlass and rope, and began winding 
it up. Alan darted forward, and seizing the handle said, 
' It needs two men to do that.' 

Dreams, according to Freud, form a royal road to the 
unconscious. Some years ago when I was trying to test 
this matter for myself I gathered a considerable collection 
of children's dreams. Realising, however, how impossible 
it was to arrive at any interpretation of these dreams 
without coming into contact with the dreamers, I did not 
pursue the matter very far. 

Recently Dr. Kimmins has made an extensive study of 
school children's dreams, and by an examination of their 
manifest content has been able to make some interesting 
generalisations. Very suggestive is his finding that very 
few dreams are associated in any way with the school. 
This may be a sign that the school touches only the super- 
ficial layers of the child's mental life. If so there is urgent 



THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND 37 

need that the teacher should find some method of penetrat- 
ing deeper, so that the material given in school may really 
play a formative part in the creation of the personality. 

One would think that Margaret's dreams would be easily 
interpreted, yet I seldom find them so. It is of course 
generally easy to trace them to some event of the day, 
but of their deeper meaning I cannot be sure. Her dreams 
seem to be mostly about animals, and she very often speaks 
aloud, but not always so that she can be understood. 

One night when she was sleeping in my room, she startled 
me by a very loud ' Yes,' then another somewhat lower, 
then in rather tearful tones, ' Want to go in and stroke the 
beaver.' I called to her to reassure her, but she began 
quietly crying, and I had to go and soothe her. "In the 
morning, as is very usual, she could not remember any- 
thing about the dream. 

A couple of mornings later she gave a squeal, which made 
me speak to her. At breakfast time she told me she 
squealed because a butterfly fell on her neck ; father had 
been touching the butterfly. 

In the middle of the night she will, so far as I know, give 
little or no information about the dream if she wakes. 

A dream of tins period was about wasps crawling all 
over her dressed like people ; they had hands and feet ; 
one in a pink dress stung her. 

Stories often affect the dreams. 

I cannot be certain that any of the dreams of which I 
have knowledge represent wish fulfilments. Fear dreams 
seem to be common. 

Dr. Boyd has made a collection of his little girl's dreams 
from the sixty -ninth month to the seventy-fifth. 1 He 
does not find that his facts accord with Freud's dream 
theories ; but perhaps he scarcely makes sufficient allowance 
for the extreme complexity of mental life that obtains 
even in the six-year-old child. 

1 Child Study, October 1915. 



38 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

I have not yet sufficient material to venture a positive 
opinion. Dr. Boyd is, I am sure, right in his contention 
that much light is to be expected in this region from the 
close study by trained observers of the dreams of young 
children. 

There seems to be no doubt that we introduce conflict 
into the child's mind, and give rise to the possibility of 
much future trouble by unnecessary reticence on the 
subject of sex. It is natural that any intelligent child 
should inquire into the mysteries of life, and there is no 
more reason why any parent should put him off with 
mythology in this region than in any other. 

A child is very sensitive to the suggestion of manner and 
tone. If he feels that in any region questions are not 
welcome or not proper, he will cease to ask them ; but his 
inner discomfort may be shown in his conduct. 

I could give some instances of Margaret's attitude to these 
matters, but at present I see no purpose that would be 
served in doing so. She has always been treated frankly ; 
but in all children there are recesses into which even those 
most intimately associated with them have not penetrated. 
One cannot be always with a child, and influences are 
brought to bear upon them which one cannot trace. And 
the reticence that can exist in the child along with the 
most open and candid nature is a phenomenon well known 
to all students of childhood. 

When Margaret was about three she would sometimes 
say, ' I wonder, I wonder.' One night I had been assisting 
in the ceremony of disrobing ; after the little one was in 
her cot, she started ' I wonder.' Then she said to me, 
' I wonder what I wonder.' The philosopher uses many 
more words, but in face of the mysteries of life and death 
can he really say much more ? 

It may seem absurd to suggest that a three -year-old 
child may speculate on these high questions, yet modern 



THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND 39 

psychology is proving more and more conclusively that few 
subjects are beyond the questing spirit of the little child. 

Now there are certain phenomena which have interested 
the human race for untold ages, and which find a place in 
the myths of all nations. When we perceive that these 
phenomena rouse in children from the first time they make 
acquaintance with them an interest and emotional excite- 
ment which might well seem out of proportion to the 
occasion, are we justified in explaining this mental dis- 
turbance as due to the activity of the primitive within 
them ? 

As a small contribution to a great subject I shall here 
gather together a few observations which seem to me 
relevant to this question. 

We remember the part that the serpent has played in the 
dim life of the past. It has acted as tempter in the garden 
of Eden ; it twined up the tree Yggdrasil ; it is seen on the 
staff of Aesculapius and on the crown of one of the Egyptian 
gods ; on a serpent Vishnu sits enthroned ; a snake or 
dragon is the receiver of the sacrifice of maidens and the 
guardian of hidden treasure. 1 

When our little children stand transfixed at the sight of 
a worm squirming by the roadside, do all those racial 
memories stir confusedly in the depths of the individual 
mind ? 

It certainly seems to me that, whatever be the reason, 
worms possess for children a peculiar fascination. 

One morning I was returning with the two-year-old 
Margaret from an early walk. I was on the road ; she was 
on the side -path. Suddenly I heard in crescendo tones, 
' Tat ! Tat ! Tat ! Tat ! Ahtie ! Ahtie ! Ahtie ! ' I looked 
at the wonder, and beheld a worm. Seeing that I remained 
unmoved, Margaret pulled herself together, recollected the 
business on which she had been intent — she was taking 

1 For the symbolism of the serpent, see Jung, The Psychology of 
the Unconscious, passim. 



40 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

some flowers to her mother — and, saying sweetly ' Ta-ta ! ' 
to the wriggling animal, continued on her journey. 

One day going along the Middle Meadow Walk I saw 
a cherubic boy transfixed in much the same way. This 
time the ending was different and much less pleasant for 
the worm. ' Georgie ! Georgie ! Georgie ! ' called the 
discoverer. Georgie, evidently accustomed to such 
marvels, came slowly forward. Seeing his calm, the cherub 
recovered himself. ' I '11 kill it,' he remarked cheerfully, 
and proceeded to tramp on it. 

In the Diary of a Free Kindergarten l we read that 
' Wurrums ' cause tremendous excitement when the chil- 
dren are at work in the garden ; and once when a party 
of teachers and fifteen children were in the country, they 
all stood in a ring for ten, or possibly fifteen, minutes 
watching the movements of the strange creature. 

Natural phenomena such as thunder, lightning, wind, 
clouds, sun, moon and stars, earthquakes, rain, snow, hail, 
let loose the myth -making tendency in children. This 
tendency our explanations, fortunately for us, can do 
little to stop ; for science is more and more becoming a 
great whole, of which each part is intimately bound to every 
other ; hence it is inevitable that the reach of the child's 
questions should far surpass the grasp of his understanding. 

Even though the children of this country have no 
practical experience of earthquakes, yet their imagination 
seems to be fired by them. 

Margaret was about four and a quarter when she was 
casually told, on the falling of a ' palace ' she had built, 
that an earthquake must have knocked it down. A day 
or two later she was playing with her blocks before break- 
fast, and I heard the following : ' I 'm building an earth- 
quake, and if any one comes out in the earthquake that 
clock's to tell them the time. Do you feel all the place 
1 By Lileen Hardy. (Gay and Hancock.) 



THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND 41 

shaking with the earthquake ? There 's a fine arch, isn't 
it, for the earthquake ? That is an earthquake. I 'm 
building all the things shaking like that. What do earth- 
quakes do to doors, mother ? ' (Jam them.) ' And then 
can't you open them ? Why ? I 'm building an earth- 
quake, Nana.' (Enter Nana with breakfast.) ' Let me 
finish the earthquake. Do earthquakes give winds, 
mother ? You know the kinds of winds that trees give ; 
do they blow, mother ? What a big earthquake it is, isn't 
it, mother ? It '11 jam all the doors, won't it ? It 's 
an earthquake I 'm building now. Is it shaking your 
chair ? ' 

The association here of wind with trees is interesting. 
Not very long after this the child said, ' What wind, 
mamma ! I can never make out what it is, the wind, 
mamma ! ' ' What do you think it is ? ' 'I think it 's 
a tube train going shoo-oo-oo.' 

The family was staying in London at this time. 

I think it is very likely that the answer was not seriously 
intended, but is an illustration of childish reserve. We 
often find this reserve in the way in which a child will put 
a question of deep moment to himself ; he will throw it 
out in an offhand casual manner, so that the serious intent 
is often quite unsuspected by those whom he is questioning. 
Li the same way when he himself is questioned, he swerves 
aside from any attempt to reveal his deeper thoughts, and 
conceals himself in a cloak of frivolity. 

Margaret has not nearly finished with the wind yet. 
Mr. Wind has been her friend from babyhood, and even 
when he blew her hair into her eyes and she had to fight 
for breath against him, she would look bravely up, and 
say, ' He is having fun with me, isn't he ? ' We were 
talking about him one day when she was nearly five ; 
unfortunately I have no exact note of what led up to her 
question ; she drew her breath in and out and asked, ' Am 
I making wind ? ' 



42 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

At one time I think she had had a story about Aeolus 
and the baby winds, but I do not know what effect this 
had on her thought. 

Some months after the above question I have noted 
the following : ' Does wind always come before thunder ? ' 
' It has nothing special to do with it.' ' But thunder and 
lightning are great friends, aren't they ? ' 

When there are two children, the myth -making tendency 
has more scope, because the elder feels it incumbent upon 
him to satisfy the curiosity of the younger. Thus Alan, 
when he was about six, told his younger brother for a fact 
that a long time ago there was a huge lot of water under 
the earth, and that it had burst up at some one point like 
a waterspout, and had formed the sea. This legend was 
based on the known fact that when a deep hole is dug, water 
begins to collect in it. 

Mythical explanations of interesting parts of the body 
are readily given. Thus one little girl asked her elder 
sister about the navel. ' Wait till the morning,' said the 
elder, ' and I '11 tell you about it.' By the morning she had 
evolved the ingenious theory that the navel is the part from 
which you expand, from which the skin stretches out so 
that growth becomes possible. 

Besides the wind Margaret has thought much about the 
clouds. It is not long since she confided in me, ' Before 
I was told, I used to think the greyness was the cover, and 
that there were holes in it that the water came through.' 

A day or two ago I saw in a newspaper the remark of a 
little boy who after gazing for some time at the starry sky 
said, ' I like all those little holes that let the light come 
through.' This little fellow evidently believed in a very 
literal way in the curtain of the night. 

All children speculate about death just as they all 
speculate about birth. Margaret is one of the most amiable 
and gentle of children — one of whom you would unhesitat- 
ingly say she would not hurt a fly — yet I have one or two 



THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND 43 

instances of her killing an insect in the most cheerful and 
friendly fashion. She was three when she one day in- 
formed me she had ' a nice little greenfly ' on her dress ; 
a minute or so later in the same conversational tone she 
added the statement that she had 'made it dead.' A few 
weeks later her father told me that when she was out with 
him she stamped on some small creature, and then inquired 
brightly, ' What was that insect that I deadened ? ' 

Some light may be thrown on the apparent heartlessness 
of these acts by a question which came the following summer. 
I had been speaking of a large piece of shortbread that was 
once given me in my childhood, and my belief that it was 
enough to kill me. ' And did it make you dead ? ' inquired 
Margaret with interest. 

When she was about four and a quarter she asked if she 
were good enough to die, but no one knows what put this 
notion in her head. She had been at school for a few 
weeks by this time, so it was less easy to follow her thoughts. 

When she was four and three-quarters I called her a bud 
one day and said she would be a flower when she was a big 
girl. 'And what after that?' 'Perhaps a fruit.' 'And 
what after that ? ' I didn't know. ' I think I 'd have 
to be an angel.' Later I inquired, ' What is an angel ? ' 
' A person that lives in heaven, but you won't go there for 
a long time ! ' With natural anxiety I asked, 'Why ? ' 
and was relieved to hear the answer, ' Because j^ou don't 
go to heaven till you die, and you never, never come back 
again.' 

This seems sufficiently orthodox, but I cannot feel 
certain that Margaret is resting here. One day soon after 
she was five, her mother happened to say she loved her 
with her heart. ' You don't love me with your heart. 
It 's you that love me.' . . . ' Is your heart a bit of you ? ' 
Her idea apparently was that it was not. ' Is your skin a 
bit of you ? ' 

Our uncertainty as to the meaning of the term self is sure 



44 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

to make difficulties for the logical mind of the child. I do 
not know whether the above conversation had any influence 
on an incident which came under my observation about a 
year later. 

I was looking at a copy of the Saturday Westminster 
Gazette in which was an In Memoriam picture of Louis 
Botha clad in armour, recumbent on a tomb. Margaret 
asked about the man, and I said he was dead. She wished 
to know how that could be when he was there . According 
to her account she thought when people died they went 
straight to another world, body and all. ' What part 
goes ? ' she said. ' The thinking part,' I replied. Later 
I had the paper in my hand again, and the child became 
wildly impatient to see the picture once more. This 
emotional excitement is, as I said above, a symptom of the 
stirring of the unconscious. 

Two days later we were playing personifications ; 
Margaret lay down flat, announcing, ' I 'm dead ; I was 
killed by a stone.' So in her little mind there are con- 
tradictory ideas, which she has not yet brought face to face 
with one another. We are apt to think of the adolescent 
mind as more especially tormented by metaphysical 
difficulties, but this may merely be a time when doubts and 
fears which come with the very beginnings of thought rise 
once more to the surface. 



THE MOTHER TONGUE 45 

CHAPTER IV 

THE MOTHER TONGUE 

In the case of most children little attention is given to their 
education in the use of the mother tongue until they go to 
school at five years of age. Nevertheless, thanks to their 
gift of imitation and their tireless energy in practice, most 
of them, when their environment has been at all favourable, 
can at that age speak very well. A child of five ought to be 
able to make himself understood by any one, not just by 
those to whom his speech has been familiar from baby- 
hood. 

Although it is true that most children do teach themselves 
to speak, yet we might with advantage help them a great 
deal more than we do. 

In the first place, when we are associating with children 
it is our duty to make our own speech as distinct and as 
pleasing as we can. It is of great importance that a good 
model should be available for the child. We should, 
moreover, be particular in our choice of words ; any word 
is not good enough ; we should take pains to select the 
most fitting word. We shall thus give the child the oppor- 
tunity of acquiring a large and choice vocabulary. How 
much may be done in this way the following pages will to 
some extent show. Thirdly, we must never impede the 
child in his progress towards perfection by imitating his 
faulty pronunciations. 

In many, perhaps most, cases a certain amount of 
definite instruction is desirable. 

In acquiring speech children are, or ought to be, also 
acquiring ideas ; hence the importance of precision in the 
language we use when with them. 

It is very instructive to watch closely a child's develop- 



46 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

ment in speech ; this observation should be accompanied 
by carefully dated notes. 

A child carefully brought up among well-educated people 
will at an early age speak with marvellous correctness. 
Such a child's speech often deteriorates when he goes to 
school, or when he associates much with other children 
or less well-educated adults. 

Word Practice. — Children's chatter often gets upon 
their mother's ' nerves,' yet it ought not to be suppressed, 
for it is nature's method of teaching language. Those of us 
who have lived with a little child know that between the 
ages of two or three and five his chatter may be said without 
exaggeration to be unceasing. He talks, if allowed, all the 
time. The little children of our streets are so inarticulate 
when they come to school largely because their environment 
has been such as to discourage this natural flow of words. 

If we study the early speech activities we may learn 
much which has an important bearing on educational 
methods. 

First, in this spontaneous exercise the child is absolutely 
tireless. He talks for the sake of talking. He says the 
same thing over and over again for the mere pleasure of 
saying it. And we allow him. We do not say, 'Come 
and have your ten-minutes' or your half-hour's lesson in 
talking.' We just let him talk as much as he likes. And 
we do not trouble him with corrections. He pronounces 
badly, and he murders grammar. But we do not mind. 
We smile and say, ' It will come all right in time.' And it 
generally does. 

If we were always correcting the child, always stopping 
him, trying to make him pronounce correctly, trying to 
make him observe the rules of syntax, what would be the 
effect ? Would not the little one begin to feel that language 
was much too difficult and troublesome a thing for him 
to learn ? Would he not cease talking ? 



THE MOTHER TONGUE 47 

And yet by and by, when we come to teach spelling, and 
reading, and writing, do we not aim at obtaining perfection 
from the first ? Do we not stress the child's errors ? Do 
we not make him feel that these arts are very difficult, that 
it is very hard to make progress, very hard to satisfy the 
teacher ? Where is the sense of joyful power that accom- 
panied his gradual acquisition of the ability to talk ? He 
soon tires of writing, he soon tires of learning to spell, but 
he never tires of learning to talk. 

This is brought forcibly home to us by a study under- 
taken by an American parent. For one entire day he wrote 
down everything said by his three -year-old daughter. 
The result may be read in the Pedagogical Seminary for 
March 1916. It occupies thirteen large pages of small 
print. It consists of 11,623 words of which 859 are dif- 
ferent. This child had an unusually large vocabulary, 
2282 words, but the intensive practice is a common char- 
acteristic of childhood, a characteristic so remarkable 
that it is only because our minds are deadened by custom 
that we do not lose ourselves in wonder whenever we meet 
with it. 

Vocabulary. — The size of a person's vocabulary is no 
sure index to his mental capacity. Yet in a general way 
the more intelligent person, and certainly the person whose 
interests are widespread, does tend to have a larger 
vocabulary than people less intelligent or less widely 
interested. Certainly in the case of children a large 
vocabulary is practically an unfailing sign of an alert 
intelligence. 

Method of Obtaining an Individual's Vocabulary. — 
If we wish to obtain a child's vocabulary the method 
usually followed is to note every word used by the child 
during a certain period, Ten days is a convenient time. 
During that period the child is encouraged in every way to 
use as many words as possible. Pictures are shown him, 



48 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

and he is invited to name objects and to describe actions. 
He is taken to places which will stimulate him to make use 
of any terms at his command. Sometimes he may dis- 
cover that we are making lists of words, and he will co- 
operate and be greatly uplifted if he can bring us a word 
that we have not yet on our list. 

It is well to use a separate sheet of paper for each letter 
of the alphabet. This device helps to prevent duplication, 
and also automatically classifies the words to some extent 
for us. Where a word can be used in several senses or as 
different parts of speech, it is important to note how it was 
used. It is usual to exclude plurals which are regularly 
formed, but child and children, foot and feet, and so on, 
count as two words. Similarly the inflexions of a regular 
verb do not count, but those of an irregular one do. 

It is clear that the older the child is the less satisfied 
could we feel that by this method we should obtain even 
approximately his entire vocabulary. Up to about the 
age of five the method is applicable, if we have an observer 
who knows the child intimately, and who is conversant 
with all the ramifications of his interests and activities. 

For adults and for older children resort must be had to 
another method. That commonly employed is to take a 
standard dictionary and go through it either in its entirety 
or by selecting words in accordance with a definite plan, say, 
by means of taking the last word on every sixth page. If 
we know the total number of words in the dictionary, the 
number of words presented to the individual tested, and 
the number correctly defined by him, then a simple pro- 
portion sum will give us his complete vocabulary. The 
larger the dictionary used the more reliable is the result. 

It is to be hoped that in the near future representative 
lists of words will be published which will enable us to 
calculate individual vocabularies with less labour. In the 
Stanford Revision of the Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale, 
Professor Terman has published a list of a hundred words 



THE MOTHER TONGUE 49 

selected by rule from a dictionary containing eighteen 
thousand ; by means of this test the vocabulary of any 
individual may be estimated by multiplying by 180 the 
number of words in the given list known by him. According 
to the experimental results obtained when this vocabulary 
test was being standardised, passable vocabularies for the 
different mental levels are as follows : — 



8 years 20 words 


vocabulary 3,600 


10 „ 30 „ 


5,400 


.12 „ 40 „ 


7,200 


14 „ 50 „ 


9,000 


Average adult 65 ,, 


11,700 


Superior adult 75 ,, 


13,500 



It is evident that these methods of obtaining individual 
vocabularies leave out of account the large number of words 
which we could understand if we heard them used, but 
which we cannot define when they are presented to us in 
isolation. In order to include this vocabulary Mr. Fred 
Gerlach, who has published a valuable monograph on the 
subject, devised the following ingenious test. One thousand 
words were selected by rule from a dictionary. Of these 
four hundred were found to be so uncommon as to be very 
generally unknown. These words the subjects undertak- 
ing the experiment were asked to define. For the other 
six hundred words four definitions were given of which one 
was correct. The subject was asked to mark the correct 
definition. Certain deductions were made from the number 
correctly selected to allow for the part which chance would 
play in the result. The total number of correct definitions 
obtained by the two tests was then multiplied by 250, the 
thousand words being representative of 250,000 ; and thus 
the subject's total vocabulary was obtained. 

Size of Children's Vocabularies. — To procure a vocabu- 
lary is evidently a somewhat arduous task. We have 

D 



50 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

therefore still comparatively few satisfactory studies 
available. Moreover, naturally those that have been made 
— at least in the case of little children — refer to subjects 
whose environment is an intellectual one ; that is, it is 
practically certain that the published vocabularies are 
representative of children who have had exceptional 
opportunities for amassing words, and who are by heredity 
exceptionally fitted to take advantage of their opportunities. 
Whipple makes the following statement : ' In the twenty- 
odd published vocabularies, we find that children from 
sixteen to nineteen months are using from 60 to 232 words, 
that two-year-old children are using from 115 to 1227 
words, and that the vocabulary increases rapidly from 
that time on. It is perfectly safe to assert that the average 
three -year-old child makes use of 1000 words. This holds 
true at least for the child who has an ordinary quantum 
of curiosity and a normal tendency toward linguistic 
imitation, and who is in daily contact with parents or older 
children who are ready to name situations for him as fast 
as they appear.' 

On two occasions I have endeavoured to obtain the 
vocabulary of my little niece, Margaret. On the first 
occasion she was thirty-one months and she was able to 
use at least 726 words. On the second occasion she was 
twice as old (five years and two months) and was able to 
use at least 2195 words. On neither occasion were proper 
names counted. 

For the first vocabulary I employed the method generally 
used with little children, namely that of writing down all 
the words employed by the child during the period of in- 
vestigation. For the second vocabulary I used the same 
method to some extent, but realising that at the time 
circumstances were such that I could by this method get 
only very unreliable results, I also went through a small 
dictionary with the child's father, and he selected all the 
words which to his knowledge she freely used. The 



THE MOTHER TONGUE 51 

number of words indicated by him was 1428, leaving 767 
which were obtained directly from the child. This dis- 
crepancy shows, I think, that the father was extremely 
careful to mention no word which was not in frequent use 
by the child, and secondly that, as was to be expected, 
a considerable proportion of her vocabulary belonged to 
environments with which he was not conversant. When 
he was doubtful of a word I took a note of it and endeavoured 
to obtain its meaning from my little subject. This I very 
rarely failed to do — another sign that the figure given is an 
under-estimate. It is evidently a difficult thing for a child 
to give the meaning of an isolated word ; he may under- 
stand it quite well, and even be able to use it, when occasion 
arises, without being able to define it. 

I did not of course ask Margaret for definitions. I 
suggested that we should play a sentence -making game, 
each sentence to contain a word chosen by the other 
player. The following will give some idea of the results 
that I obtained. 

Insect. ' Midges are insects and they like to come out in 
the night about four o'clock.' (Credit.) 

Bill. ' Do you mean a dickie's bill or a writing 
bill ? ' 'A writing bill.' ' A writing bill is very much 
needed when we order things from a grocer's shop.' (Two 
credits.) 

Castor-oil. ' I 've never tasted it ; it 's not a bit nice, 
I 've been told.' (Credit.) 

Sometimes the sentences gave an interesting peep into the 
child's play world. Here is one that is pure romance : — 

Chop. ' Do you mean the chop we eat or the chop we 
chop things ? ' ' Eat.' ' A chop is a thing we eat and we 
have to put the bone aside, and if we had a dog we would 
throw it to the dog, and the dog would gnaw it up.' ' Now 
the other chop.' ' Once upon a time my father was 
chopping a bone into two, because we had two dogs and 
they were both quarrelling for a bone, so rciy father chopped 



52 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

the bone into two, and gave one half to Billie and one half 
to Towser.' (Two credits.) 

Copper. ' I don't know.' ' Couldn't you make a sen- 
tence ? ' 'I could make a sentence, but I don't know it.' 
' Well ? ' ' My dressing-table is made of copper.' (Fail.) 

That I had taught the child the regrettable fact that we 
can make sentences without understanding the meaning 
was shown a day or two later, when I gave her Kernel. 
' Kernels do steal our food.' ' What is a kernel ? ' 'I 
don't know, but I made a sentence.' 

Ginger. ' Don't like it.' ' How do you know ? ' 'I 
know because it 's very hot — at least Margaret Wise's 
mother said it to Margaret Wise.' (Credit.) 

The sentences sometimes opened terrifying vistas, for 
example : — 

Soot. ' " Brush the soot down the chimney, mother, 
because I know there 's an awful lot in it, because I 've just 
tried with your new best hat." " Then you 're a naughty 
girl and I '11 send you straight to bed." : (Credit.) 

Some of the child's sentences threw an interesting light 
on the way in which words are picked up. Thus I asked 
for ' figure.' It was something of a shock to me when she 
returned ' You 're a figure ' ; then she added enlighteningly 
* a familiar figure.' I had no idea she knew this phrase, 
or this sense of the word figure. But a little inquiry 
elicited the fact that on seeing two members of the family 
at a distance a day or two before, I had remarked, ' There 
are two familiar figures.' The child had no idea what 
familiar meant. 

That the exercise was a difficult one appeared in various 
ways. I tried several times to obtain the word ' gutter,' 
but in vain. One day when we were outside, she spon- 
taneously remarked, ' I like walking in the gutter.' This 
illustrates the strong association between the actual object 
and its name. Similarly once when we were looking at an 
illustrated copy of Hiawatha, Margaret made some remark 



THE MOTHER TONGUE 



53 



about the ' antler things.' She was unable to give me the 
word deer till we came to a picture of one, when she at once 
supplied the word. 

One of my students procured for me the vocabulary of a 
little boy, Ian, who at the end of the period of investigation 
(three weeks) was 56 \ months old. This investigation 
was a very thorough and careful one. Much use was made 
of pictures and story-books, and special visits were paid to 
the Zoo and the Museum that any hidden store of words 
might be revealed. 

At first Ian was unaware of what was going on, but seeing 
his Daddy always busy with pencil and paper he made 
inquiry, and received the answer, ' I am making up a list 
of words.' The child at once eagerly offered his help, and 
thereafter would frequently come and say, ' Here is a 
word, Daddy. Have you got this one ? ' 

The proper names listed are chiefly geographical, or 
names of public characters such as Lloyd George and Lord 
Rhondda. Besides these, numerous names of people were 
known and were well remembered even when they were 
not in frequent use. 

The following table shows the results obtained. It agrees 
very well with the reports of other observers : — 

Number of Nouns . 
Number of Proper Noims 
Number of Verbs . 
Number of Adjectives 



Number of Pronouns 
Number of Adverbs 
Number of Prepositions 
Number of Conjunctions, Interjections, etc. 
Total Number 



1239 
65 
384 
253 
32 
67 
30 
33 
2103 



In the Pedagogical Seminary (March 1915) may be found 
a study of an unusually precocious five-year-old child. 
This little girl had a vocabulary of 6837 words, of which 



Age of 
Child. 


Number of 
Cases. 


1 year 


5 


2 years 

3 „ 


16 
4 



54 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

56*8 per cent, were nouns. This vocabulary includes 
117 colour terms, 107 tactual terms, and 158 sound terms. 
If the reader will try writing down all the colour terms he 
can think of, he will be able to realise to some extent what 
such a vocabulary means. 

As already implied, the number of published vocabularies 
is still too few and too select for satisfactory generalisation. 
The following table may, however, be of some use for 
reference : — 

Average of ,-> 

Vocabularies. -ttange. 

12-4 words 4-20 words. 
4546 „ 36-1227 „ 

16085 „ 1176-2282 „ 

Word Meanings. — Little children educate themselves. 
But they require help, for our present civilisation is too 
complex for even a genius child to conquer it for himself. 
We must, however, carefully follow their lead, for it is easy 
to stifle the delicate budding intelligence. One often meets 
children whose fathers have a hobby, astronomy, geology, 
what you will, and one often finds that the children re- 
gard the subject with extreme aversion, can ' see nothing 
in it.' And yet what a chance for these children had the 
father the teacher's gift ! As it is, the father has probably 
tried to teach, that is, to interest the children in his hobby, 
and he has simply created an aversion. Too much is as 
bad as too little. 

At the same time this does not mean, as people who 
ought to know better sometimes declare, that we are to 
leave little children to themselves in the matter of education. 
No ! Too little is as bad as too much. The consequences 
of underfeeding, in the mental as in the physical world, are 
possibly even more fatal than the consequences of over- 
feeding. 

Little children, I said above, educate themselves. Big 
children, generally speaking, do not educate themselves. 



THE MOTHER TONGUE 55 

And the reason is that they are the products either of over- 
feeding or underfeeding — often of both. 

How then shall we find the safe middle course ? 

I have indicated it above. We must follow the child's 
lead, or perhaps rather we must march abreast with him. 
The direction may be changed sometimes by the child, 
sometimes by the teacher, but let them beware of separating 
too far. 

In the matter of word meanings we certainly for the most 
part allow the child to be the guide. He works so hard, 
and he goes so quickly that it takes us all our time to keep 
pace. There comes a time in the child's study of language 
when he pounces upon new words with joy ; he plays 
with them like a kitten with a ball ; he applies them in 
unexpected places ; he makes derivatives from them ; in 
fact one of the never-failing joys of a child's companionship 
is that he is the master, not the servant of words. 

" ' I don't know what you mean by glory,' Alice said. 

Humpty-Dumpty smiled contemptuously, ' Of course 
you don't — till I tell you. I meant " there 's a nice knock- 
down argument for you." ' 

' But " glory " doesn't mean " a nice knock-down 
argument," ' Alice objected. 

' When / use a word,' Humpty-Dumpty said in rather a 
scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — 
neither more nor less.' 

' The question is,' said Alice, ' whether you can make 
words mean so many different things.' 

' The question is,' said Humpty-Dumpty, ' winch is to be 
master — that 's all.' 

Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a 
minute Humpty-Dumpty began again. ' They 've a temper, 
some of them — particularly verbs, they 're the proudest — 
adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs — how- 
ever, / can manage the whole lot of them ! Impenetrability ! 
That 's what / say ! ' 



56 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

' Would you tell me, please,' said Alice, ' what that 
means ? ' 

' Now you talk like a reasonable child,' said Humpty- 
Dumpty, looking very much pleased. ' I meant by " im- 
penetrability " that we 've had enough of that subject, 
and it would be just as well if you 'd mention what you 
mean to do next, as I suppose you don't mean to stop 
here all the rest of your life.' 

' That 's a great deal to make one word mean,' Alice said 
in a thoughtful tone. 

' When I make a word do a lot of work like that,' said 
Humpty-Dumpty, ' I always pay it extra.' ' ; 

I never asked Margaret what wages she pays her words, 
but I hope she pays them well, for they deserve it. Even 
of the verbs she is not afraid ; as ' I standed by the river,' 
' I hood behind the chair,' ' I gove him an apple,' ' I fro wed 
the stone,' and innumerable other examples prove. Like 
animals, verbs must, I think, be gentle with little children. 
These liberties date from Margaret's third yesa. She has 
grown more respectful now, though she is by no means 
' hauden doom' 

'Adjectives you can do anything with.' For long 
Margaret compelled better to enlist as a verb, and I must 
admit it did yeoman service. 

' You better fix it so I won't fall off, bettern't you, 
father ? ' (Age 3J.) 

' You 'd better count.' ' Better I ? ' (Age 3f .) 

Learning that the cloth for breakfast was not yet on, she 
demanded, ' Why won't the table be table clothed ? ' 

With reference to shelling peas : ' I 'm peeling them, and 
you 're podding them.' She was breaking them across. 

We were walking on the rocks at the seaside. ' I 'm 
picking out the smoothies ; are you ? Only I need smoothers 
because I 've bare feet.' 

We were gathering shells. ' Have you found manyer 
than me ? ' 



THE MOTHER TONGUE 57 

The child was wading in a rock pool. ' I 'm collecting 
livings. I 'm a catcher, I 'm a fisher. I 'm pretending 
I 'm catching fish. There 's a livey, not a deady.' 

Yesterday's pudding reappeared. ' Is this the remainings 
of yesterday ? ' 

We noticed a horse standing. ' The horsie 's waiting for 
his Wo-man.' ' His what ? ' ' The man that says Wo ! to 
him.' 

' Do any she -people wear them ? ' ' Who ? ' ' She -people 
like you and me.' 

Yet Margaret is on the whole a kind mistress to her regi- 
ment of words and does her best to humour their fancies. 

' Do kittens like to eat mouses ? ' I suppose I unwarily 
assented. ' Isn't it mice they like to eat ? ' 

When written down such questions look like a deliberate 
trap on the part of the child. Sometimes adults take them 
so, and may by doing so bring subsequent trouble on them- 
selves. At first the questions are due to sudden recollection, 
and are always put in good faith. 

Margaret, like many children, will pursue a meaning 
with untiring energy and great ingenuity. The other day 
' barmaid ' was mentioned. The child began to inquire of 
every one at table, ' Are you a barmaid ? ' Then, ' Is 
Cousin Frances a barmaid ? ' ' Cousin Flora ? ' ' Princess 
Mary ? ' It was only after this last failure that she adopted 
the superior method of connotation, and inquired, ' What is 
a barmaid ? ' 

With all children relationships are attractive subjects 
of study. Margaret knows her father is my brother-in-law, 
and she was trying hard to find what this meant. ' Is he 
in law all the time — even when he 's in London ? ' 

' Auntie, are you a parent of mine ? ' ' Not in the strict 
sense of the word.' ' Is father ? ' ' Yes.' ' What are 
you ? ' 'A relative.' ' A relation ? ' ' Yes.' Margaret 
was six by this time and was writing a letter when these 
questions burst upon me. 



58 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

I am reminded of Lady Glenconner's delightful tale : — 

" ' What is a wife ? ' asked One after a thoughtful pause. 

' I am wife to Daddy.' ' And is Daddy your wife ? ' 
' No. Daddy is my husband.' ' Then who are you ? ' " 

Once Margaret has enlisted a new word, she exercises it 
until she feels she has, as it were, broken it in. 

Such a word was brittle. She used it one day with 
reference to oatcake. Then she tried it on the butter. 
But this was not allowed. Next morning she had more 
success with egg-shell. She kept on saying, 'I can hardly 
get my egg out ; this shell 's so brittle.' 

We do not always realise how difficult our words are to 
children. One evening the five-year-old Margaret began 
asking her mother ' What 's pity ? ' over and over again. 
No answer seemed quite to satisfy her. When I went to 
say good -night she started again. I was puzzled, as she 
had used the word quite correctly the day before. ' What 's 
pity on people ? ' she asked. This gave promise of some 
light. ' Who said it to you ? ' ' Nana says " Have pity on 
me " when I hug her.' 

Training in the Use of Words. — When a child goes 
to school more or less formal training in the use of words 
begins, to which we give the name of composition. But 
before this a great deal of informal training ought to be 
given which would lay a firm foundation for the later work 
at school. This training should be given entirely in the 
form of play or incidental and momentary instruction. 

In describing the course that it might take I shall as usual 
take advantage of Margaret's ready co-operation. 

From the point of view of language a little child is a 
foreigner in our country, and to him should be extended 
the courtesy which we extend to a foreigner. It is not 
necessary to shout at him, as many people think, but it is 
necessary to speak a little more slowly and distinctly than 
most of us are in the habit of doing. This is not, however, 



THE MOTHER TONGUE 59 

as in the case of the foreigner who has learned the language 
by a different process, that the child may understand 
us ; it is that he may learn to articulate, so that he himself 
will be understood. 

On the whole I think Margaret's immediate entourage 
speak with considerable distinctness. Yet I have several 
notes showing the difficulty the child had in picking up our 
words, and showing how misconceptions might arise there- 
from. 

Comment was made on the big head of a baby depicted 
in an advertisement. Some one said, ' He 's been overfed.' 
Margaret, then almost four, at once demanded, ' Has he a 
loaf of head ? ' 

A few months later the child noticed her mother at 
dinner time put something aside, and of course at once 
wanted to know what it was. ' A piece of gristle,' she 
was told. ' Is that the crissle that makes the butterfly ? ' 
she asked. A few days before she had made the acquaint- 
ance of a chrysalis, and had not got the sound quite right. 

In the following spring I was walking with Margaret, 
and happened to refer to some cyclists I saw in the distance. 
' Do you mean the giants ? ' she said in a puzzled tone. 
It was, I think, some months since she had had some 
fragments of the story of Ulysses. 

About the same time she was found to be saying ' must 
of ' instead of ' must have ' in such phrases as ' he must 
have done it.' This pronunciation was for a while 
established as a habit. It is easy to see that such mispro- 
nunciations must greatly add to the difficulty of grammar. 

My notes are not rich in these mistakes, yet all teachers 
know that they occur very frequently. In such material 
as hymns, for example, they often make havoc of the sense, 
and in a large class of children probably a very small per- 
centage of these misunderstandings come to light. This 
is one reason why those who aspire to teach little ones 
should pay special attention to their own mode of speech. 



60 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

Kindred errors may arise from the fact that words that 
sound the same may have very different meanings. It 
was, I think, in her fourth year that Margaret discovered 
this interesting fact, about the same time that she was 
beginning to take some interest in spelling. 

We spoke about ' round 0.' ' There are different kinds 
of O's,' said the child wisely ; ' there 's the letter, and O 
that you say.' 

One day she was looking at a picture. ' That is a 
Maypole,' said her mother. 'Is it a p'etence shop ? ' 
said the town -bred inquirer. 

In her hearing I had used the words lap and also collapse. 
' Lap sounds just like collapse. Does it spell with the same 
letters ? ' 

Had the enthusiasts who belong to the Simplified Spelling 
Society approached Margaret at this time they would have 
found her a ready convert. We were talking about a word 
beginning with ke. ' It begins with c,' I said, ' c often 
says ke.' ' Why does more than one letter say ke ? The 
letters should all say the same thing, shouldn't they ? ' 
This is not so happily expressed as was usual with her, but 
the thought of the little rationalist is easily followed. The 
opportunity of the Society is, however, rapidly passing 
away, for if Margaret goes on .as she has begun she will 
soOn regard it as a tremendous joke that through says thru, 
and cough says coff ; and not for the world will she interfere 
with the fun the letters have among themselves. And 
indeed there is something to be said for accepting their 
little vagaries in this spirit. 

Idioms are of course a stumbling block to the child just as 
they are to the foreigner. Her uncle was one day playing 
with the three -year-old Margaret. ' Do you love your 
uncle,' he demanded, ' do you love your uncle like mad ? ' 
' Does " mad " love his uncle ? ' was the non-committal 
reply. 

Inversions of the sounds making up a word are very 



THE MOTHER TONGUE 61 

common. Just the other day we were speaking of a family 
in which a number of deaths had occurred. After listening 
in silence for a little, Margaret, now six, turned to me and 
remarked, ' This is not a very pleasant conservation, is it, 
auntie ? ' 

She used mentjer for ferment when she was three, and I 
could give many similar examples, both from her speech 
and from that of other children. 



62 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 
CHAPTER V 

THE MOTHER TONGUE {continued) 

Oral Composition. — Oral composition of course begins 
with the first sentences. Elsewhere I have traced the 
development of this form of speech in Margaret's case. 
Here I shall take into account only more formal efforts. 
Many of these are ' read ' from a book or ' written.' They 
tend to be produced so quickly that it is almost impossible 
to take them down with verbal accuracy. Generally the 
child cannot repeat them. They come welling up from the 
' unconscious mind.' 

It was just before she was three that Margaret began to 
read aloud from a picture. The only specimen I have is 
' a nice little girl looking at some poppies.' The effort 
was of course spontaneous, not in answer to a question. 

The next record I have belongs to age three and a half : 
' There was a little girl, and she had a book, and when she 
dropped it, it broke.' A more interesting one is a tale of a 
zebra who wouldn't stand still, and when he wriggled he 
always got whooping-cough, and he got nothing to make 
him better, and he coughed and coughed every day. The 
teller was having her hair brushed when this tale was told ; 
the zebra's reprehensible wriggling is thus accounted for. 
The ' whooping-cough ' is probably derived from some 
casual talk about the dangers of little children going to 
school. 

Here are two ' letters ' written by Margaret (thirty -eight 
months) and read aloud to us : — 

' Once I were getting a nice picnic all on the nice hills. 
The hills were very, very nice. The hills were getting all 
clouded and clouded and clouded.' 

On the second occasion I had wished her to write to 



THE MOTHER TONGUE 63 

her uncle, but she insisted on writing to ' a soldier in 
France ' : — 

' Are you well, Dear Soldier ? How are you keeping ? 
Dear Soldier, how were you well ? If you are sick, you '11 
have to go to bed. How is the Soldier in France ? How 
are you keeping ? If you 're keeping well, you mustn't 
go to bed. Are you getting well in France ? ' 

The ' letters ' of this period, especially if dictated, were 
full of repetitions and much dominated by the environ- 
ment. Such letters, however, belong to a different category, 
being for the most part products of the conscious mind. 

At the age of four Margaret read the following story 
from an accommodating brick which represented a picture 
paper. I have only a fragment of it : — 

' . . .,' said the Bird to the Aeroplane, ' I am sorry I 
can't. I am too busy just now. I am getting worms for 
my young ones, and teaching them to sing.' 

When Margaret was about four and a half I told her the 
story of the cat and the rat and the little red hen. ' Who '11 
lay the cloth ? ' said the little red hen. ' I won't,' said the 
cat. ' I won't,' said the rat. ' Then I must do it myself ,' 
said the little red hen ; and so on till it comes to ' Who '11 
eat the breakfast ? ' 'I will,' said the cat. ' I will,' said 
the rat. ' You shan't either of you have any,' said the 
little red hen. 

Margaret was rather sad they didn't all have breakfast ; 
and I had to explain the little red hen's disobliging conduct 
by pointing out that the others had refused to do any work. 

' Then / '11 write a story,' said she. So she ' wrote ' and 
' read ' the following : — 

' Once upon a time there was a little boy and a little cat 
and a little red hen. They all said, " We must go out for a 
walk. Who will lay the breffast ? " " Me," said the cat. 
" Me," said the rat. " Me," said the little red hen. They 
all had to have some breffast for they all did some work.' 

A minute or two later she bettered this by a story in 



64 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

which there were many more characters : ' Two little girls 
to be one another's sisters, and two little boys to be one 
another's brothers, and the little girls were six and the 
little boys were five, and so they were one another's twins.' 
Inspiration did not fail, for then there came another 
version : ' Once upon a time there was a little boy and a 
little cat and a little rat and two little boys and two little 
kittens and two grown-up cats . . . and they all said, 
" Well, I think we '11 go and get the breffast ready. Who '11 
do that, I wonder ? " "I will," said the little boy. " I 
hope the little boy will fry the bacon best. What '11 you do, 
two little girls ? " "I '11 put the rolls on the table." 
" And / '11 put the rolls on the table." You see there were 
two plates of rolls, brown rolls and white rolls . . . and 
pokers and geeters.' (What are they ?) ' Sort of pokers, 
nice pokers made of sugar and spice — and writing ' 

This sudden divergence into nonsense I have several 
times noticed in Margaret. I don't know if it is a common 
phenomenon in childhood. It is as if the easy automatic 
flow stopped, and the conscious self feeling the jerk snatches 
at something in the environment in the vain effort to cover 
up the confusion. 

These examples seem to me to suggest that if one had 
been able to present a series of suitable models to the child, 
she might fairly soon have made quite nice little original 
stories. In every sphere the presentation of a good model 
at the right moment has a wonderful effect. It is at such 
times that one feels with Kate Douglas Wiggin that there 
is no talent that the Kindergarten teacher can afford to be 
without. Yet the model presented must not be such that 
the child feels it to be altogether out of his reach ; therefore 
we need not despair, though we have neither the art of 
Raphael nor the music of St. Cecilia. 

In some of the stories the age of the author results in a 
pleasing freshness of view. Here is a fragment of a five- 
year-old one read from a book in which there was a picture 



THE MOTHER TONGUE 65 

of a crab : ' . . . and pinched my fingers off, but I 
seccotined them on with great care and a little glue — a 
little glue mixed in.' 

Two or three days after this, when I went to say good- 
night, I heard Margaret, as she lay in bed, say : ' Little 
Betty's father is in France. When he comes home he will 
play with her on the sand, and in the wood he will look for 
hedgehogs and squirrels.' When I entered, the child said 
she would say a nice song to me. There was considerable 
effort to get the beginning again, during which time she 
indicated I was not to attend. This was very interesting, 
It meant that when I made her self-conscious by looking 
at her expectantly she could not start the mechanism. 
When she did secure the start she repeated the sentences 
verbatim. I said, ' That is more like a story than a song.' 
She replied, ' I will sing it to you when I get tunes in my 
voice.' 

In the matter of memory most of us are aware of the 
danger of interfering with the machine. In this region I 
have often noticed the bad effect that conscious effort 
has on Margaret. I used to think she did not learn poetry 
easily. One day I was amazed to hear from her mother 
that in the morning in bed she had repeated three eight -line 
verses that I had read to her two or three times a few 
evenings before. This was the spontaneous automatic 
memory which would, I am convinced, save us so much 
trouble if only we could learn its secret. 

Half a year later oral composition took the following 
form : ' Now make one about the daffodils. On the 
banks of the rippling river the daffodils grow, and in the 
trees the robins sing. The robins sit and sing. They sit 
by their mother all day long. They sing, Come, my merry 
sweetheart, come along, we must go home ; we shall catch 
the train at ten o'clock.' 

This last statement was true of the speaker, as she was 
returning to her home that morning. The story was made 



66 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

when she was in a room by herself preparing for the journey. 
It shows, I think, the influence of the ' pretty sentence ' 
game to which I shall refer later. 

Here is a delightfully dramatic story by a little boy 
friend of mine, four years of age : — 

' Once there was a little tree just as big as a finger. And 
a little boy came and pulled it up by the roots. And the 
father smacked the little boy and he died. And an angel 
did not come down from heaven and fetch the little boy, 
but he went up in a balloon.' 

In February 1919 I received three stories which Margaret 
had dictated to her mother : ' The Story of the Four 
Bunnies that are Black and White,' ' The Story of the 
Child and Squirrel Brownie,' and a third without a title, 
which I quote : — 

' In the spring-time the butterflies flutter about to tell the 
little children that they can run about and play now, for 
the spring-time has come. And the flowers do grow, and 
the merry little lambkins run about and play, and the merry 
little birdies sing, and the little daisies' heads are peeping 
up from below the dark ground, and the buttercups do 
peep too. 

' But in the winter all the little things go to sleep, and 
don't rise till the spring-time comes ; and everything is 
very quiet.' 

Pretty Sentences. — This is an amusement which Mar- 
garet and I have invented for ourselves. It started in 
this way. Soon after she had turned five, we happened to 
spend a month together at the seaside. We were sitting 
on the shore one day, when she said, ' Wouldn't you like 
to take a photograph of that rippling water with the sun on 
it ? ' Next morning we happened to begin to talk of pretty 
words and pretty sentences. Among other things I said 
her sentence of the day before was pretty. She was much 
gratified, and kept referring to it. Indeed I almost re- 



THE MOTHER TONGUE 67 

gretted my act, because I feared she was going to be held 
down to that level. 

Another effort of that morning was ' Low the bushes 
grow,' which she developed into ' Low the bushes grow 
with a few tall branches.' The inspiration was derived 
direct from the garden where rose-bushes were visible 
growing in just that way. Another attempt was ' Lots 
of poppies grow in the green cornfields.' 

Next day she recurred to the game, and I have recorded 
this example : ' The little birds learn to fly when their 
mothers tell them. Over the sea the little birds fly.' 

Two days later : ' Down on the grass near by the sea, 
the grasses and sea -pinks do grow.' 

This was a period when Margaret enjoyed a good deal 
of play with other children in the garden and on the shore. 
Moreover, I was trying to obtain a vocabulary, so we could 
not give much time to our ' pretty sentences.' Yet I think 
the composition of them helped the child to attain to con- 
siderable appreciation of words. 

Next summer when we were in the Highlands the ' pretty 
sentence ' game once more came to the front. Some of 
the sentences took on more markedly the rhythmic quality 
that appeared to some extent before : — 

1 Green grow the needles on the tall Scotch fir.' 

1 The larches grow so tall and straight, 
They hold themselves so straight and tall.' 

The delicate personification combined with the inverted 
repetition in the last line is, I think, very effective. 
Another line with similar personification — 

1 The ferns reach out and tickle my legs,' 

brings vividly to view the bare legs of six years old. 

A few days later the sentences showed a tendency to 
grow into paragraphs. In so doing they were apt to lose 



68 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

the terse character which formed one of the merits of the 
less ambitious efforts. Here is one such paragraph : — 

' The sunlight glimpses on the fields and makes them 
look so red and yellow. The sunlight says, " Why are you 
not dug up into allotments, to give us potatoes and other 
things to eat ? " Answers the field up into the sky to the 
sun, " I 'm glad I 'm not dug up, for I would not like to be 
dug up ; for I 'd rather remain as I am, and show my 
greens and reds. Oh. sun, go on glimpsing at me making 
me look so reddish yellow from a distance." ' 

All the ' pretty sentences ' were the direct product of the 
environment. There was another about a butterfly alight- 
ing on a scabious ' which bent its head under the weight of 
the little thing.' I reintroduced the game, to take the place 
of stories which I had been telling her on our walks, and 
which she had acted with considerable over-excitement. 

In this game it is a difficult problem to decide how much 
depends on me, that is, on the teacher. The examples I 
have given seem to me to belong entirely to Margaret. 
But just as the child stimulated me, there is no doubt I 
must have stimulated her. I certainly felt that in the 
hands of a competent person the game had very great 
possibilities. 

In such games as this it is our practice, so to speak, to 
play turn about, and sometimes we both grow so eager 
over our own compositions that the casual ' That 's very 
nice ' we award to the other is very evidently a mere tribute 
to politeness. This is, I think, well ; Margaret had given me 
a lesson last summer about the effect of over-cordial praise. 
In attempting to teach a child composition, one does not 
wish to make her either self-conscious or self-satisfied. 

The incident that brought home to me most clearly the 
possibilities of the game was the following. In one of my 
sentences I said something about the ' long fingers of 
autumn ' ; a day or so later Margaret adopted this phrase 
for one of her sentences. 



THE MOTHER TONGUE 69 

I had begun to borrow phrases from the poets. I 
remembered ' Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness ' 
which was not laid hold of, and a few others ; and had I 
been able to develop the work, I should certainly have made 
a point of leading Margaret through this gate to those who 
have made nature vocal for us. I feel sure that any one 
who could do so with a responsive child would receive his 
own back with interest. It would have to be delicately 
done, for originality is a tender plant and requires air as 
well as sustenance. 

The work would be well worth doing. What a thing 
it would be if we could feel that our children when they 
leave school could find in their inmost being an echo of the 
words of Browning's fifteen -year-old hero as he stretches 
his arms to welcome the end of that fife which he has lived 
so fully : — 

' I can give news of earth to all the dead 
Who ask me — last year's sunsets and great stars 
That had a right to come first and see ebb 
The crimson wave that drifts the sun away. 
Those crescent moons with notched and burning rims 
That strengthened into sharp fire, and there stood 
Impatient of the azure ; and that day 
In March a double rainbow stopped the storm — 
May's warm slow yellow moonlit summer nights — 
Gone are they, but I have them in my soul.' 

Let it not be said that I aspire too high. Many people 
have found that in this region of nature poetry the child is 
at home. 

In the delightful Letters of a Schoolma' 'am I find the 
following account of a school walk given by a friend of the 
Schoolma'am who had the privilege of one day accompany- 
ing the party : — 

1 One little girl was much excited to see so many cows 
eating with such determination. " Look, look," she cried, 
quoting Wordsworth's Lines Written in March, "there 



70 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

are forty feeding like one ! ' ' Later, a boy, seeing the homing 
sheep and the threatening sky, said to Judith, "Do you 
notice, miss, 

Sheep are gone to fold, birds to their nest ; 
And coal-black clouds that threaten heaven's light 
Do summon us to part, and bid good night ? " 

I could hardly believe my ears, the words were said clearly 
with a full intonation, but how should a boy of eleven have 
studied Venus and Adonis ? When the boy was out of 
earshot Judith told me that she picked out lines descriptive 
of country scenes from any source, often using them as 
short lessons in memory and spelling. She would write 
such a passage on the blackboard, and the children would 
learn it and write it from memory. She said the children's 
appreciation of poetry is often great. Her plan is to teach a 
good deal of poetry and let each child keep up such as he 
himself likes.' 1 

In one of the English Association pamphlets — Poetry 
and the Child — Mr. J. Dover Wilson has well brought 
out the relationship between the spirit of the poet 
and the spirit of the child. ' Upon this planet,' he 
says, ' dwell two strange races of people. The first is a 
tribe small of stature and delicate of limb, the members 
of which make their way into civilised society one by one, 
arriving among us entirely unable to look after themselves 
and quite ignorant of our language. Were it not that we 
take pity on their helplessness, they would perish miserably 
— thousands, indeed, do so every year — but the majority 
are welcomed to our houses, fed and clothed by us, and 
after a little while they learn our speech and something 
of our habits. Yet for the brief space of their existence — 
a matter of about a dozen years — they remain as strangers 
among us. They tolerate our patronage and submit to 

1 Letters of a Schoolma'am, ed. by A. B. De Bary. (J. M. Dent 
and Sons.) 



THE MOTHER TONGUE 71 

our correction ; they even court our admiration and our 
love. But they take little interest in the things we prize 
most ; their ideals are not our ideals, and they seem to 
have acquired, in the country from which they came, a 
standard of values which can with difficulty be adjusted 
to the facts of this rough-and-tumble world.' 

This strange race is, of course, the children, and every one 
will recognise how apt the description is. The other 
strange race consists of those who retain all through life 
the power of looking at the things of this world with the 
eyes of a child. These are the poets. 

It follows, then, that the child and the poet are akin, and 
that those who write notes to Shakespeare — or at least 
those who make children learn notes to Shakespeare — are 
obscurantists ; they are intervening between people who 
are in natural communion with one another, and who are 
only cumbered and driven apart by such clumsy assistance. 

Figures of Speech. — Naturally if every child is a poet, 
he will know much of the Figures of Speech before he knows 
their names. Inversion, Repetition, Analogy, Metaphor, 
Personification, Simile, Hyperbole, Contrast are perhaps 
the Figures most akin to his genius. 

It is part of a teacher's work to make implicit knowledge 
explicit, so although I knew Margaret was really on familiar 
terms with all the Figures I have mentioned, I thought I 
might as well introduce some of them to her attention. 
She is six years old now, so it is high time she knew some- 
thing of the ' flowers of rhetoric' 

So one day as we walked along our homeward way, I 
suggested that we should play Similes instead of ' pretty 
sentences,' and I illustrated by the first that came to hand, 
perhaps, ' The road stretches before us like a winding 
ribbon.' We continued till we reached home ; we were 
not far away. A day or two later Margaret said, probably 
at the same spot on the same road — associations like tins 



72 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

were very powerful in her — ' Let 's do things looking like 
things — what do you call it ? ' 

So we played again. We made no masterpieces. The 
only example I have noted is ' The trees are like great green 
feather beds,' which I considered both prosaic and untrue. 
We played once or twice again, but I seem to have kept 
no note of the result. The child, I remember, was anxious 
to compare the line of trees showing sparsely along a 
mountain ridge to hairs on a man's face, but I was not 
very appreciative. 

She made a simile once in the ordinary course of con- 
versation. I pointed this out, and she was greatly interested 
to find they were things you made by accident. After- 
wards if I made one, she was sure to inquire eagerly whether 
it was done intentionally or not. 

It may be thought these results were disappointing. 
Not at all. The seed has been sown. It is for the future 
to show what sort of plant will spring from it. I do not 
expect to see Margaret now for three months or so. Then if 
occasion arises I shall inspect and perhaps fertilise the 
seedling. 

Personification is perhaps the child's favourite Figure. 
It pervades his speech. Whether it is allied to Animism 
I do not know. In Margaret's case I incline to think it is 
purely poetic. If not, one would expect to find it specially 
active with regard to dolls. 

Now Margaret does not seem to cherish any illusions 
with respect to the life of her dolls. Soon after she was 
four, she came to me with a doll and this conundrum : 
' Dollies can't real-talk, can they, not unless you help 
them ? ' She went on to say that her doll couldn't talk 
with a p'etence mouth. I said his mouth was real as far 
as it went. She insisted it was p'etence as far as it went. 
Finally she arrived at the conclusion that a dollie wasn't 
a ' real person? was a ' p'etence person.' 

Yet her personifications are innumerable. When she 



THE MOTHER TONGUE 73 

was about three and a quarter, she was riding in her mail- 
cart and holding a somewhat heavy parcel on her lap by a 
loop of string. I noticed her getting into difficulties as it 
slid off her knee. She flushed with her efforts and com- 
plained, ' It 's trying to let go of my little finger.' When 
just four she said of the green husk of a strawberry, ' Is 
that its little petticoat ? ' 

A certain picturesqueness of phrase is common, as when 
passing a cat, Margaret exclaimed, ' What a dear little 
pussy ! just like Sandy, only it 's done in brown and black, 
and Sandy 's done in yellow and white.' 

How great is the appreciation of contrast shown in this 
Lucretian sentiment of a five -year -old boy : ' How nice 
it would be if we lived always in hot baths, and had our 
dinner there, and had maids who lived in cold rooms and 
brought us our meals in the bath on tables that stood out 
of the water.' * 

Literature. — Absorption is necessary as well as expres- 
sion, and in connection with the teaching of the mother 
tongue one naturally begins to ask oneself what literature 
is most suited to the child ; and when and how should he 
begin to make acquaintance with the lords of language. 

When should one begin the study of Shakespeare is a 
question sometimes raised. 

It is a question to which I should like to know the 
answer, so I thought I would put it to Margaret. 

I selected the Midsummer Nightfs Dream as perhaps the 
most appropriate test play, and through the medium of 
Rackham's illustrations I introduced it to her when she 
was three and a half. Once or twice I read her Titania's 
lullaby, which possessed, so far as I saw, no special attrac- 
tion for her ; and I gave her fragments of the story so far 
as was necessary to elucidate the pictures. Puck, I fear, 

1 • Suave, mari magno, turbantibus aequora ventis, 
E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem.' 



74 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

I represented in a rather more favourable light than he 
altogether deserves. One could not deny his naughtiness, 
but at the same time I emphasised his helpfulness to 
those that Hobgoblin called him and sweet Puck. When 
the child rendered help in some piece of domestic work, 
it became a joy to pretend that Puck did it. One charming 
picture of the mischievous elf she used to apostrophise 
with gleeful tones. ' Oh ! Puck ! You naughty boy, 
you naughty, naughty boy ! ' 

Still, on the whole, I thought the time had not yet 
come. 

Some three months later, I visited her at her own home. 
I asked her if she remembered Puck. 

' Yes, he was a rascal.' 

' What did he do ? ' 

' Didn't he put the donkey's head on the man ? What 
did he do with the man's own head ? ' 

I reminded her of one or two other episodes, and I may 
have read a line or two from the scene between Bottom 
and the fairies. 

Two or three days later she spontaneously remarked, 
i One day when I was in bed at twelve o'clock ' (her 
noon-day rest), ' I read about Bottom and all the little 
babies who said, Ready. I said Ready? 

Puck continued to be one of Margaret's friends, but we 
did little to make his better acquaintance till she was six 
years old. Then one day she asked for the whole story 
with Puck in it. I acted with her most of the first three 
scenes, skipping a little in the longer speeches, and giving 
her the shorter ones to say. 

It is seldom easy to say how much Margaret understands, 
but her mother told me that ' squeezing the juice ' and a 
few more references of the kind came into her morning 
fantasy, which unfortunately I did not hear. And it was 
the same evening that I had a visit from the ' mischievous 
elf.' 



THE MOTHER TONGUE 75 

Some ten days later some phrases from the scenes read 
came up when the child was working with the Montessori 
material. (See p. 96.) On the afternoon of that day we 
read a good deal more. She was interested and did not 
want to stop, but I thought it fatiguing for her and broke 
off. We read in the garden. As Oberon and as Puck we 
crouched on the bank and chuckled over the foolish ways 
of the distracted lovers. ' Lord ! what fools these mortals 
be ! ' remained in the child's memory, so that later we 
had to point out to her that it was not an ejaculation 
which might with impunity be brought out in a mixed 
company. 

At our next reading we finished the play. After that we 
spoke of acting it properly some other time with a larger 
company. I suggested that grandpapa should be Theseus. 
' No, he had better be Egeus, because he was an old sort 
of man.' So we agreed that father should be Theseus. At 
that moment our good landlady entered. Margaret turned 
genially to her : ' And if we come here again for our holiday, 
Miss Macbeth, you could be Hippolyta, father's queen — 
Theseus's queen.' 

With an absorbent and suggestible child like Margaret 
it is often difficult to say whether she is ripe for a certain 
piece of literature or not. Often at the moment of reading 
I can get no light at all. 

It is the custom in many schools nowadays to demand 
expression from the children immediately after a literature 
lesson. Certainly if the mode of expression demanded 
were acting, this custom would accord with Margaret's 
nature. At one time she could scarcely wait for me to 
finish a story, before she would eagerly demand to act it. 
Very probably I might obtain expression by drawing in the 
same speedy way, but I do not happen to have tried. One 
knows that many children respond delightedly to the sug- 
gestion that they should draw what has just been read to 
them. When Margaret gives me no clue to her mental 



76 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

response, I have two methods of finding out whether she is 
or is not yet ready for what I have offered. A day or two 
later she may spontaneously utter words directed by the 
material I have given her, or she may ask to have the story 
or poem once more. 

Sometimes an apposite reference or quotation proves 
that the matter has gone home. When Margaret was just 
four I tried her with Alice through the Looking -Glass. One 
day as we were walking together I twined my arm in hers, 
and said, ' Here we go, arm in arm.' ' Like two castles,' 
she returned with delight. 

The Just-So Stories are most quotable. The child was 
not five when she suddenly said to me at breakfast, ' What 
have you at your end of the table, brother ? ' Not very 
long ago she wished to take my hand, which I refused. 
' You should not be cruel,' she said reproachfully, ' even to 
a little girl.' 

From babyhood Margaret has been very reluctant to 
commit herself when she was not sure. Hence we very 
seldom obtain from her evidence of those childish mis- 
understandings which to our sophisticated minds are so 
amusing. Yet undoubtedly, like other children, she has 
many ideas which require readjustment. When she was 
five, as we walked past a cornfield, some one sang a line or 
two of the hymn, 

* The fields are all white, and the reapers are few ; 
We children are willing, but what can we do 
To work for our Lord in His harvest ? ' 

Soon after that the child volunteered to sing me a song of 
her own. Here are the words : ' The fields are all white 
and the reapers do grow in the cornfield. I pluck them 
every morning, and they have sprung up again by the 
next morning.' I listened appreciatively, but made no 
comment on her use of the word reapers, 

A couple of days later I asked for her song about the 



THE MOTHER TONGUE 77 

fields ; she gave me first, ' The fields are all white and the 
reapers are few, as I go marching up the road ; when I 
come away to a gate, I go through it to Shell Bay ' ; then 
as a repetition, ' The fields are all wet, and the wetness is 
sparkling — sparkling at me like little red diamonds. As I 
go marching down the street, I see no gate, so I go marching 
away down the street to Port Seton.' 

In the interval Margaret may have heard the correct 
wording again, or some doubt as to her former interpretation 
may have entered her mind. The following day when she 
was walking with her mother she sang to her ' the fields 
song ' ; after which I overheard her remarking in a tone of 
gentle explanation, ' Reapers don't grow, Mamma, you 
know.' I was not able to ascertain how her knowledge had 
developed. 

It is, I am sure, better, as a general rule of method, to 
take no notice of mistakes like those when they occur, but 
unobtrusively to put the child in the way of rectifying them. 
Unfortunately many adults have little command of their 
countenances, and they are apt to laugh, and to comment 
openly on the ridiculous mistake. Here as elsewhere we 
should treat the child with the politeness and sympathy 
we would show a foreigner ; if any one does push the 
mistake into the foreground, we should gloss it over, and 
do our best to set the little speaker at ease again. 

Our use of words of course often misleads children . I asked 
Margaret (age 5 J) to give me a sentence containing the three 
words, ' London,' ' fortune,' ' stream.' After a moment's 
thought she replied, ' Once upon a time I was going to 
London, and when I was in the train I saw a stream a-flowing, 
and my mother said I saw that stream because I still had 
my fortune.' This looked as if the task were too difficult 
and the child had drifted into nonsense. However I 
inquired, ' What is your fortune ? ' ' My face,' she returned 
promptly. All was now clear. The famous fine, ' " My face 
is my fortune, sir," she said,' was the only connection in 



78 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

which my little companion had ever met the word 
fortune. 

When she was five and three-quarters I thought it might 
be time for the Jungle Books. I took first the story of 
Kotick, the white seal. She listened with great intentness, 
but several times asked Why ? in such a way as to suggest 
she was not really taking much in. 

I thought, ' The time is not yet.' 

A day or two later when she was alone in a room, I heard 
her voice. I listened and heard something like this, ' " Who 
are you ? " "I 'm Kotick, Clameater." " You mustn't 
call me Clameater, for I know you do it just to tease me. 
If you do it again, I '11 — I '11 pull off all your fur and eat 
you up." " Well, I must call you Clameater, for I don't 
know your real name." " My real name is Walrus." ' 

This was distinctly encouraging. I had no idea the 
child had realised even so much of the story. So I tried 
Toomai of the Elephants. She listened with great attention, 
but again my reflection was, ' Not yet ready.' Nevertheless 
twice later she spontaneously asked for it again. 

Very often when Margaret is with me I read poems to 
her for half an hour or so before she goes to bed. She 
enjoys this, but in accordance with her usual objectionable 
caution she keeps her thoughts for the most part to herself. 
Very probably at the moment she has none to express ; for 
thought needs time to ripen. When I allow myself to be 
so far led away by an unscientific impatience as to ' fish,' 
I am treated as I deserve, and get nothing but a banal 
' That 's very nice,' or ' I like it.' 

I have, however, a few observations. Her own com- 
positions to my ear indicate a certain sensitivity to sound. 
When she was five and a half, her mother told me that she 
liked Boadicea, and that she thought it was the sound that 
appealed to her. Considering her strong objection to 
killing, I do not think it could be anything else. 

Yet when she was five and three-quarters I noted that 



THE MOTHER TONGUE 79 

the rhyme and structure of a verse did not seem to impress 
her much, as in repetition she would omit lines or shorten 
them without noticing anything wrong. 

This summer I tried The Lady of Shalott, but its sound 
could not compensate for its sadness ; so she did not wish 
it finished nor did she wish it again. I did read it or parts 
of it once or twice again ostensibly to others, but her 
attitude was unchanged. I also read Tennyson's Daisy. I 
thought it might interest her because it was written in 
Edinburgh where she has often been. She gave one of her 
rare comments towards the end of the poem, ' I think he 
must be thinking of little children.' She repeated this 
later, and I said, ' Why ? ' ' Because it 's such a nice 
singing sort of thing.' 

For more regular reading I used The Golden Staircase as 
prepared for the four, five, and six year old. The Jumblies 
and Eugene Field's charming Wynken, Blynken, and Nod 
soon became first favourites. She was sensitive to lullabies, 
and one evening objected to my reading one on the ground 
that it was not time for her to go to sleep. Once or twice 
she began to say the poems along with me, but on the whole 
preferred to listen quietly. As soon as one was finished 
she would demand another, never apparently wishing to 
' pass any remarks.' 

Margaret's type of imagination has considerable influence 
on her literary preferences. She identifies herself so 
thoroughly with the characters in the story that her 
emotions often overcome her. Some children, I believe, 
enjoy this, and with tear-bedewed eyes will beg a story 
sadder still. Margaret has not yet discovered the joy 
which for those others is in the heart of imagined sorrow. 

When she was four and a half I read her part of Robinson 
Crusoe, after which we acted it. Robinson, it will be 
remembered, spent a long time making a boat, and then 
found it was so heavy that he was unable to launch it. We 
used a brick for the boat, and I really held it down, while 



80 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

apparently we both struggled with all our might to move it. 
I, as Robinson, was naturally sad, but I did not make my 
feelings very apparent, for I knew the danger. Neverthe- 
less Margaret warned me I was making her cry. I hurried 
on as fast as I could to the plan of making the next boat. 
Nevertheless the child's mouth opened, big tears formed, 
and came dropping down. I thought there was going to be 
a real howl, but I managed to make her smile ; we dried 
up the tears, and went on with the story. 

By and by she remarked, ' Isn't it strange that p'etend 
should make me really cry ? ' It is not only adults who can 
psychologise ! 

Later when we read about the earthquake, Margaret 
thought we 'd better not play that part, as she did not want 
to be frightened. Again when Robinson's boat was 
caught in the current, she suddenly snatched it (a bit of 
wax) off the table in case it should be swept out to sea. 

The following day she declined altogether to play 
Robinson Crusoe lest her feelings should again be rent. 

This tearful reaction still occurs. Not long ago her 
father read her a story in which a child met with an 
accident. Some time later she was doing something with 
me when she remarked, ' I was nearly crying about the little 
boy.' This is a mild way to put it, as she had wept silently, 
covering her face with her hands. 

In the evening I wished her to ask for the conclusion of 
the story instead of playing cat, but she would not. Just 
as she was leaving the room after saying good-night, she 
?aid somewhat apologetically, ' Auntie, I know I would 
have been nearly crying again about the little boy.' 



A MONTESSORI EXPERIMENT 81 

CHAPTER VI 

A MONTESSORI EXPERIMENT 

In the latter half of 1919 I spent about six weeks with 
Margaret, then six years and two months. I was very 
anxious to test the Montessori method of teaching the 
mother tongue, and I thought this would be a good oppor- 
tunity. In Margaret as usual I found a delightful collabo- 
rator, and the results were of considerable psychological 
interest. 

I worked under certain disadvantages. I wished 
particularly to test the method of teaching grammar ; for 
this purpose my little subject ought to have been able to 
read and write perfectly. Margaret could read, but not 
with fluency. She could print a little, but she could 
not write. I was trying some experiments on the teach- 
ing of writing at the same time, and the copy-book 
proved a strong counter-attraction to the Montessori 
' games.' 

Again, I had no other children available, so that there 
was no stimulus from companionship — a stimulus which I 
think would have proved very valuable. 

Another disadvantage was that I had to prepare my own 
material rather hurriedly with no facilities for obtaining 
just what I wished, and therefore I did not succeed in giving 
it the beauty and daintiness on which Dr. Montessori rightly 
lays such stress. 

The general principles underlying the invention and use 
of the Montessori material for teaching grammar are, I 
think, as follows : — 

1. The material must be such that the child works im- 
pelled not by us but by his own inner needs, till he has 

F 



82 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

won from it the general truth, or principle, or classification, 
or method of work, which it is intended to teach him. 
This principle forbids us to make the child work. Unless 
we have spontaneity and joy, we have not the Montessori 
method. 

2. The material is calculated to render explicit know- 
ledge which is implicit in the child (e.g. regular and irregular 
plurals, agreement of verb with subject, etc.). 

3. Differences not yet apparent to the pupil are emphasised 
by being associated with apparent differences, and so come 
to be recognised by him at first implicitly without full 
consciousness ; later explicitly with full consciousness. 
Thus the child has never noticed or thought of the dif- 
ferences in words indicated by the term ' parts of speech.' 
These differences are emphasised for him by the nouns, 
adjectives, etc., all being printed on cards of a distinctive 
colour. All the adjectives for instance may be on blue 
cards. To the child these cards belong together because 
they are blue ; but he gradually comes to perceive that 
they also belong together for a more subtle reason ; and 
then he begins to realise the meaning of the term adjective. 
This simple device enables the child to keep his own material 
tidy, not to mix his nouns and verbs, etc. 

The character training which is given by the respect 
with which the material is treated is not to be despised. 

4. All mental work is accompanied by simple handwork 
(manipulating the cards, etc.), which serves three purposes : 
(a) it relieves the mental strain, (6) it provides the rest 
period so important for the fixation of the impression, (c) it 
focusses the child's attention. 

Because my little subject was not quite at the right stage 
for the grammar study I provided also some of the less 
advanced material which she was equally free to select. 
The promise of a new game or a new colour of card always 
proved attractive. 



A MONTESSORI EXPERIMENT 83 

The first exercise I tried was a Prefix exercise. 1 On a 
piece of paper I printed the following : — 

Place : displace, replace, misplace. 
Cover : uncover, discover, recover. 
Close : disclose, reclose. 
Arrange : rearrange, disarrange. 

I had one set of letters such as is commonly used in play- 
ing spelling games, and I prepared another set. I showed 
the child how she must build up the words out of those 
two alphabets, always making the root word of the one 
and the prefix of the other. I illustrated the meaning of 
the different words. In this part of the lesson she showed 
great interest and pleasure, readily using the words herself. 
She worked through place and its derivatives ; she then 
did the meanings of the derivatives of cover ; she built up 
cover out of its alphabet, and then stopped. In spite of 
her interest in the meanings of the words, the activity on 
the whole did not attract her, and I felt somewhat dis- 
appointed. 

A second paper which I prepared for a similar exercise 
was the following : — 

War : warrior, war-ship, war-horse, war-song. 
Play : plaj^er, playful, playmate. 
Fish : fishing, fisherman, fishmonger. 
Wood : wooden, woody. 

Two days later my pupil did a little work with this, 
taking play as her word. Her first play I think she built 
correctly, but when a little later I looked to see how she 
was getting on, I found she had four times arranged the 
letters thus, paly ; yet she kept saying ' p, 1,' to herself 
all the time, and never noticed the mistake, on which I of 
course made no comment. This is an instance of that 
mind-blindness of which I was to have even more striking 
examples later. 

1 For all the exercises see The Advanced Montessori Method, vol. ii. 



84 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

Next I prepared four slips of paper on which were printed 
a table, some beads, an orange, the "payer. I also prepared 
four white cards on which were printed the four nouns, and 
four cards with a blue line on them on which were printed 
the four adjectives. I explained to Margaret that she was 
to read the phrases and then build them up out of the 
cards, which were arranged in two little bundles, cards giving 
the names of the parts of speech being on the top. Here my 
material suffered in comparison with that of Dr. Montessori, 
who provides delightful little boxes with special labelled 
compartments for the different sets of cards and slips. 

Margaret made two correct arrangements ; she then 
did a paper, saying ' a table ' all the while, and the table 
without ever noticing the mistake. For a special reason 
I told her this time that there was something wrong, and 
she found the mistake with some difficulty. She had been 
hurrying in order to exhibit her work to her father, but she 
did not wish to do the exercise a second time even to let 
her mother see. For at least a few seconds while she was 
doing it, her attention was thoroughly caught and her 
interest aroused. 

Next day she played the game again with considerable 
concentration. She was very anxious for every one to 
come and see it. This desire to exhibit should die out, 
and to a considerable extent did die out even in the short 
course of my experiments. During these first days the 
child was probably over-excited by a long journey and the 
wealth of new stimuli that were being brought to bear upon 
her. Throughout the period the Montessori work had, I 
think, a soothing and steadying effect on her. 

I now prepared some longer phrases with words to 
correspond : the flat surface, the curved surface ; the blue 
bead, the yellow bead ; the long pencil, the short pencil. The 
purpose of these phrases is to bring out the function of the 
adjective. The adjective particularises the thing. Here 
it causes us to think of a different thing altogether. I 



A MONTESSORI EXPERIMENT 85 

explained to Margaret that she was to read the long slip, 
fetch the thing indicated, and then build up its name from 
the words. I gave her first the flat surface and the curved 
surface. She took great pleasure in feeling various surfaces 
and deciding whether they were flat or curved. As her 
example of a curved surface she ingeniously seized on a 
publisher's catalogue which had come to me by post, and 
which having been folded presented quite a good example 
of a curved surface. This sufficed for the morning's work. 

About this time a cousin arrived to spend some time with 
us, and naturally Margaret paid great attention to the new- 
comer. In the morning, after play and talk with her, she 
said, ' I must soon begin my Montessori games.' That 
morning she did all the phrases given above, but not very 
correctly and with considerable wavering of the attention. 
On this inattention I never commented. The child was 
perfectly free to stop when she chose. 

So far my experiments had not proved very successful. 
The word -building games had not yet attracted the child 
at all. The noun-and-adjective game was better, but I 
could not feel it had developed much attractiveness in 
itself apart from my interest in the work. 

I went on to a Masculine and Feminine game. On sixteen 
white slips I printed the words, bull, brother, father, he-goat, 
husband, king, man, son, and their corresponding feminines. 
These were arranged in two separate bundles and labelled 
masculine and feminine. I read the masculine names with 
the child, and we arranged them in column on the table in 
alphabetical order. I then gave her the feminines and told 
her to place each opposite the word to which it belonged. 
I gave her any help she required in reading. She made 
one or two false suggestions, as that daughter might belong 
to brother. In the end she arranged them all correctly, 
having taken 7 minutes 24 seconds to do so. She did not 
wish to do it again, but walked about the room humming, 
counting her steps, etc. 



86 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

I thought this might be the phenomenon of false fatigue 
which Dr. Montessori has discovered. She says that a 
period of restlessness develops after the first period of 
work ; but after that the children settle down, and do 
their best work. I did not succeed in establishing the 
occurrence of the phenomenon with any certainty in 
Margaret's case, but of course the circumstances were not 
favourable for its development, as the experiments were 
carried on just when opportunity offered, and being in the 
country we naturally spent as much time as possible out of 
doors. 

On this particular day we seem to have had a good deal 
of time, for after an interval I was able to try a Singular 
and Plural game on similar lines. The nouns selected were 
child, foot, hand, leg, nest, nose, tooth, wolf. The method 
was the same as that described above. I printed the words 
one and two before the nouns on the singular and plural 
cards respectively. 

Having arranged the singular nouns in column, the child 
would take a plural card, read it, then go over the singular 
words from the begimiing till she came to the right one. 
For example she read two teeth ; she then began at the top 
of the column of singulars, read one child, one foot, one 
hand, then looked back to the card she was holding, read 
two teth, corrected this to two teeth, then returned to the 
fourth singular card, and studied all the way down the list 
till she came to one tooth. She took 5 minutes 20 seconds 
to the whole exercise. 

On the following day Margaret played the Masculine 
and Feminine game again, and also a simpler game used by 
Dr. Montessori for younger children. I printed on separate 
slips of paper the words arm-chair, basket, bell, biscuit-box, 
carpet, chair, chess-box, clock, curtain, coal-box, cushion, door, 
floor, flower-pot, hinge, picture, saucer, sideboard, sofa, stool, 
table, tray, wall, window. These slips the child had to read 
and place on the object named. When she was unable to 



A MONTESSORI EXPERIMENT 87 

read the word by herself, I gave her the pronunciation of 
the letter or letters that caused the difficulty. She com- 
pleted this exercise after 21 J minutes' steady work. 

The following day I presented a new Masculine and 
Feminine game, making use of the following words, boy, 
brother-in-law, Duke, Emperor, lion, nephew, uncle, work- 
man. In doing the word game the day before she had 
spontaneously developed the habit of going away into a 
corner of the room to study the word. I don't know 
whether this was an assertion of independence or not. I 
had been careful never to offer my assistance too soon. 
Indeed I made a point of attending to my own writing, and 
only looked now and then to see how the little student 
was progressing. On this occasion there were some inter- 
esting developments. Having read and arranged the first 
five masculines, she remarked : ' They 're all man -things.' 
' Because they 're masculine,' I replied. ' What is 
masculine ? ' ' Just a man-thing.' 

As she continued her work of arranging, I heard the 
following reflections : — 

' What should I put to uncle, do you think ? ' 

' Is it workman ? What should I put to workman, do 
you think ? Worklady, or workwoman ? ' 

I made no reply* to her remarks except when it seemed 
demanded. In what follows I put my contributions in 
brackets. 

' What should I put Empress to ? ' (What do you think ?) 
' Emperor.' 

1 What should I put duchess to ? ' (Look at them all and 
see.) This advice did not lead to success, so I suggested 
that the word should be put aside till the end. 

' What does niece go with ? Nephew — / think it goes 
with nephew.' This was said with a very wise, knowing look. 

She failed to find nephew, and laid aside the word. But 
a little later I noticed it was correctly placed. She did not 
seem to make any use of the alphabetical order in which the 



88 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

masculines were arranged, although she had taken an 
intelligent pleasure in helping to arrange them so. 

When I next looked, the child was holding girl in her 
hand and searching for boy. She had put sister-in-law 
opposite boy, and although she looked at boy and read it 
aloud, she could not realise it was what she wanted. After 
she had read the list, she declared she could not find boy. 
I said, ' Didn't you read it ? ' ' No,' she replied, ' that 's 
boy -in-law .' 

This is a beautiful instance of the way in which perception 
itself is affected by a preconceived idea. 

This exercise occupied 16 minutes 39 seconds. I was 
much pleased, for thought and concentration appeared to 
be developing. 

Next day my hopes were rudely dashed. Margaret was 
very restless in the morning, flitting from one thing to 
another, chattering and playing with an imaginary pussy 
cat of which she had become possessed. After about an 
hour I asked if she would not like to do the words. I was 
told, No ; she never wanted to do them again here ; she 
would do them at home ; her pussy was so nice, she wanted 
to play with it. This, I confess, was a blow. There may, 
I think, have been some psychic disturbance the day 
before the nature of which I can only guess. Next day 
there was the same opposition to the games. At night, 
when she was put to bed, Margaret very often sold herself 
to her mother as a doll. One of the recommendations 
that she offered with the doll sold that particular evening 
was that it liked the Montessori games. Next morning at 
breakfast she indicated that she would play with them, 
but I went out early, and nothing was done. In the 
afternoon she worked a little, or rather watched me doing 
a word family ; but she showed no spirit about it. 

The following day nothing seems to have been done. 
Probably there was no convenient time. 

The following day she took the packet of twenty-four 



A MONTESSORI EXPERIMENT 89 

words, read them and placed them on the objects. This 
took her 12 minutes 56 seconds. 

I next presented the material for verb study. The 
following slips were prepared : Whisper a word, Speak a 
word ; Open the book, Shut the book ; Fold the paper, Un- 
fold the paper ; Spread your beads, Collect your beads ; Tie 
a knot, Untie a knot. The separate words required were 
printed on little coloured slips as before, the verbs being 
on blue slips. The colours certainly added much to the 
attractiveness of the game. 

Dr. Montessori suggests that the colours she makes use 
of in her English and arithmetical teaching should be 
standardised, so that a child might be transferred from 
one school to another without confusion of mind. This is 
of course very desirable. 

I gave Margaret the first slip : Whisper a word. She 
read it. I shall not soon forget the expression of delight 
that passed over her face as she realised the meaning. She 
threw both arms round my neck, and approached her lips 
to my ear. Then discovering that she had no word ready, 
she stood back, saying, ' Wait a minute.' She then em- 
braced me again, and whispered ' Daisy.' She then built 
up the sentence with the separate words. After reading 
the next sentence, she said, ' Pot.' When building up 
this sentence she took spread instead of speak. This showed 
that she was beginning to look just at the first one or two 
letters of the word. I made no comment, and having 
finished the exercise she put the used words at the bottom of 
their respective piles. 

The next sentence was Open the book. Having performed 
the action, she looked for the necessary words, and found 
them all by chance on the top of the little bundles. She 
was much impressed by this coincidence, and when she 
came to do the next sentence, Shut the book, she said, 'And 
there is shut on the very top.' The word was really collect, 
but she took it and left it quite contentedly. 



90 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

The next two sentences, Fold the paper and Unfold the 
paper, were done correctly. 

She now read Spread your beads. She went to her box 
of beads and inquired, ' Can I take any colour I like ? ' 
' Yes,' I said, ' it doesn't say any special colour.' ' Can 
I take a shell ? ' She begins to do so. ' No, it says beads. 
You couldn't take a shell, could you ? ' 'No.' She now 
counted over some beads, and brought a handful of dif- 
ferent colours. She began to arrange them according to 
colour. I intervene, pointing out that the word is not 
arrange but spread. I demonstrate. The child then reads, 
Collect your beads. ' Can I collect them in my hand ? ' 
I say, ' Rather all together on the table.' She gathers the 
beads together, and then begins to comment on the colours, 
' I have two of every one except the purple,' and so on. 

She then took the last two slips, Tie a knot, Untie a 
knot. This time she compared the two sentences, pointing 
to each word with her finger. For Untie she took Unfold, 
showing again that she was attending just to the beginning 
of the word. 

Altogether she had worked for about half an hour. The 
hand manipulation involved, I thought, seemed to be restful 
and soothing ; also it seemed to help the smooth progress 
of the thought process and to allow time for the deepening 
of its flow. 

The following day I gave my little pupil a new Singular 
and Plural game on which she spent about 13 J minutes. 

That morning when we were returning from our walk I 
allowed Margaret to have a very favourite game of hers — 
Vice -versa — that is, I became her child. She began to tell 
me what I should have to do when I went to school. She 
told me of the Montessori game with two alphabets. She 
explained that I would perhaps make one word like sense 
with one alphabet, then another word sensitive, the sense 
part with the same alphabet and the rest of the word with 
a different alphabet. 



A MONTESSORI EXPERIMENT 91 

This was very interesting, first because the child had 
appeared not to care for that exercise, and secondly because 
this was not an example I had given her. 

I inquired the meaning of sensitive. My mentor ex- 
plained that you were sensible when you were in your wits, 
and sensitive when you were out of your wits. She gave me 
an example of being sensitive by capering along the road. 

About this time my experiments with the Montessori 
material were interrupted, because of the arrival of the 
embossed letters by means of which Margaret was to learn 
to write. At this she really worked very hard. It 
possessed distinctly more attraction for her than the 
grammar games, for which in some ways her mind was not 
quite ripe. 

Nevertheless, after an interval of seven or eight days I 
took advantage of a favourable moment. I wished to try 
Dr. Montessori' s device of altering the order of the words 
to see how the sense is affected, and so to throw into relief 
the functions of the different parts of speech. We took 
first the blue bead. When I began to alter the order of the 
words, appealing to the child each time to know if this made 
sense, she declared that only the original arrangement was 
sensible. 

She then took the verb sentence Fold the paper. In this 
also she would admit sense in only the one arrangement. 

She next took Shut the book. She read this Shut the 
door, and remarked ' M — m, I don't want to shut the door 
before I open the door, do I ? ' When looking through the 
nouns, she rejected book, being obsessed by door ; she then 
spread out all the nouns, but could not find door ; she 
looked again at the sentence, and asked me why I did not 
put r at the end of door. Looking at it again she remarked, 
' B-o-o-k does not spell door.' She then began to look for 
Shut the door among the sentences. She found none that 
would do ; and began to accuse me of spelling everything 
wrong. Even a worm will turn ; and I think I suggested 



92 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

that b-o-o-k might spell something, and then she cleared 
up the matter. 

We have here again a very striking example of the in- 
fluence of a fixed idea. 

This was not my only reward this morning. In con- 
nection with the sentence Open the book a very interesting 
discovery was made showing how the method induces 
thought on the part of the child. 

The child's inclination was to deny that there was any 
sense except with the words in their original order. But 
when I interchanged the and open, making the words read 
the open book, she said, ' No sense for what we want, but it 
might make sense.' She then re-read it. 'It would make 
sense. There 's two ways it would make sense — one for 
the way we want.' After making this remarkable dis- 
covery, while saying ' No sense for what we want,' the 
child began skipping about the room, thus giving bodily 
expression to the joy that accompanies mental growth. 
Here we have a germinal perception of the difference of 
function denoted by the words Verb and Adjective. 

There was now another interval of three or four days 
when other occupations possessed the field. 

I then produced sentences illustrating the function of 
the preposition. The sentences were : Lay the pen beside 
the ink-bottle, Lay the pen behind the ink-bottle ; Put the 
paper under the book, Put the paper in the book. 

In building up the first sentence, Margaret first produced 
Lay the ink-bottle ; later she made it correctly. 

When I began to interchange the words, she would 
admit no sense in any arrangement except the first. 

In the case of Put the paper under the book she admitted 
that The paper put under the book made sense ; but she would 
not allow that The paper under the book put was intelligible. 
I made as far as possible no comments on her verdicts, and 
I did my best to keep my facial muscles under control. 

When told to take the next sentence, the child remarked, 



A MONTESSORI EXPERIMENT 93 

' I think it will say, Take out the paper from the book.' 
(This shows in an interesting way perseveration from the 
verb sentences done a few days before.) 'No, it doesn't. 
That funny little preposition made me change their places.' 
She performed the act required by the sentence. She 
then began actively interchanging the words, continually 
demanding of me, ' Does that make sense ? ' Peals of 
laughter greeted any very confused rendering. I then 
interchanged the nouns, making Put the book in the paper, 
and inquired if that made sense. ' No,' she said, ' for I 
couldn't do it.' 

During the work the child showed a strong tendency to 
dance and to jubilate. This excitement was, I think, 
partly dependent on other factors operating at the time, 
and was not altogether wholesome. 

After the game was tidied away, she tried various verbal 
experiments such as : ' Slipper under embroidered table- 
cloth and table as well put,' ' Slipper, carpet, sideboard, 
bell and table and table-cloth put under the carpet,' ' Put 
the flowers into the grate paper put.' 

Altogether Margaret spent on this occasion about thirty- 
five minutes on grammar study. She then said, ' I must do 
my writing now, though.' In the midst of her first line of 
writing she said, ' " Is the paper under the book." Can 
you tell what I mean ? ' 

I was very anxious to carry my little subject on to the 
study of adverbs, because it was at this stage that Dr. 
Montessori's young pupils spontaneously broke forth into 
original composition. 1 

Margaret has always had a good command of words, 
and has always devoted a considerable amount of attention 
to them. Hence I thought it could not do her any harm 
to present the material rather quickly, though I was well 
aware that she had not yet obtained nearly all she should 
obtain from the simpler exercises. 

1 The Advanced Montessori Method, vol. ii. p. 91. 



94 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

The sentences I prepared were : Walk slowly to the window, 
Walk quickly to the window ; Look smilingly into the mirror, 
Look scowlingly into the mirror ; Go quietly to a chair, Go 
noisily to a chair. 

There were now five little bundles of words held together 
by elastic bands, each set of a distinctive colour, and 
having its name Adverb, Verb, etc., on the top. The 
Nouns were white, Adjectives white with a blue line, Pre- 
positions red, Verbs blue, and Adverbs green. 1 

I taught the child to take the elastic band off each bundle, 
read the name, place it on the table, and then place the 
other cards in a little pile below it. Thus the words were 
not all exposed to view, and she had to search the bundles 
to find the word she wanted. Fortunately for me, Margaret 
thinks much in word form ; hence I was able to obtain 
several very interesting glimpses into the working of her 
little mind. 

Here are her reflections as she set out the piles. ' Is 
this (Verb) Pile 1 ? Does Pile Noun go last ? ' (I of course 
took no notice of these questions, which were merely 
oratorical. I was busy writing and abstracted myself 
from her as much as possible. I gave any help that might 
be required in reading.) ' Preposition. There 's just two 
of them, to and into. It says to and into, to and into. Pile 
Adverb, Pile Adjective. I wish you could put this (Verb 
Pile) somewhere else where there 'd be no coloured one 
next it. Oh, I know. There.' 

She arranges the piles thus, Red, White, Green, White, 
Blue. I need scarcely call attention to the delightful leisure - 
liness — the restfulness of all this, the complete absence of 
any sense of hurry or strain. 

The child now turns to the sentences. ' Now, must I 

do what these say, auntie ? I seem to be always doing what 

1 Dr. Montessori's colours aro : Articles, tan ; Nouns, black ; 
Adjectives, brown ; Verbs, red ; Prepositions, violet ; Adverbs, 
pink; Pronouns, green ; Conjunctions, yellow ; Interjections, blue ; 
and these ought to be used when possible. 



A MONTESSORl EXPERIMENT 95 

these say.' (Reads) ' Walk slowly to the window.' She 
does so and stands there. ' Shall I come back again ? 
It didn't say so.' Her mother here interpolates, ' It didn't 
say, Stay there, either.' She returned to the table and 
picked out to as her first word. ' Now walk. Is walk 
in the green pile ? No, none beginning with W. Now 
I '11 look in this pile. No, that 's the. Now I '11 have to 
look here.' (Verb pile, where she finds it.) ' Slowly. 
Now in the Noun bundle I '11 look for slowly. It isn't 
there, anyway. So I '11 look in the green bundle for 
slowly. That 's s, c, not s, I. This is s, I, slowly. To 
the window. I '11 look in this bundle for the, and I '11 find 
the, and I '11 look here (Noun bundle) for window. Now 
I 'm ready. Do I have to change them ? ' Makes a 
change. ' Does that make sense ? Walk window to the 
slowly makes no sense, does it ? Walk to the window slowly, 
does that make sense ? ' (Yes.) ' Well, I '11 see if this 
makes sense — I don't think it will. Now I don't want any 
coloured ones together.' 

She arranges according to colour and I inquire, ' How 
many ways did it make sense ? ' 

' Two. Now I '11 put away this sentence.' She does so, 
and reads, ' Walk quickly to the window. I '11 do so.' 
She does so and returns. ' Walk I '11 leave. Take away 
this — take away slowly. Get quickly, q, u, where are 
you ? ' She takes quietly, and asks me, ' Does that make 
sense ? ' I look at the sentence and ask, ' Is that quickly ? ' 
'No.' She then found quickly, and I made the following 
variations : Quickly to the window walk, and To the window 
walk quickly, but she pronounced neither arrangement to 
have any meaning. 

1 Now, look here, Take your letter and throw it tree -top. 
What do I mean ? Take your letter to the garden tree-top.' 

I saw no meaning in what she said, and suggested that 
she should read the next sentence, Look smilingly into the 
mirror. 



96 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

The child read this and turned to the mirror. I then 
said, ' Did you do it ? ' 

' Yes,' she replied, ' I had the mischief in my eyes, though. 
I knew a piece of mischief.' Here she went off to the box 
where we kept our Montessori materials, but I do not know 
what she did there. On her return she continued, ' I 
knew a piece of mischief, so I did a piece of mischief.' 

This was a very interesting episode, for it meant that 
what I may call the Puck complex in her had been stirred 
by seeing her own expression of face in the mirror. That 
this was so was made plain a little later by her allusions to 
the Midsummer Night's Dream. 

Margaret now begins to make the sentence. She took 
into and the which were lying in full view. ' Now where 
would I get mirror ? ' She tries the Adverb bundle with 
no success. ' It may be in blue. Look is in blue ; it 's a 

verb, for it tells you what ' here unfortunately she 

broke off, and worked a moment in silence. ' Now I '11 
get smilingly.' 

The sentence being now complete, she begins to make 
changes in the order. She becomes restless, ' Oh, sweet 
Hermia ' (embraces me), ' the less I love, the more he loves 
me. Oh, sweet Helena' (embraces and kisses me), ' sweet 
Helena, sweet Hermia.' 

After this outburst she returns to work. ' Does that 
make sense, auntie ? Sweet Helena, does that make 
sense ? ' The arrangement is Smilingly look into the 
mirror, which I pronounce to make sense. She then replaced 
the words in the original order, and inquired, ' Does that 
make sense ? ' Yes. ' Do it.' I turn to the mirror and 
smile into it. 'I wanted to see if you would understand.' 

The child now read the corresponding sentence, Look 
scowlingly into the mirror. She turned to the mirror, which 
was just behind us above the sideboard, on which stood a 
biscuit -box. ' Oh, I can't scowl, for I 'm so merry and 
happy and smilingly.' She then sang scowlingly to herself 



A MONTESSORI EXPERIMENT 97 

several times. A day or two before I had read to her 
Tennyson's Merman, and it is just possible that the singing 
was conditioned by the unconscious influence of this, the 
refrain there being ' laughingly, laughingly.' 

After making the sentence she scowled to the mirror. 
' I 'm scolding the housemaid for making a dirt ; I 'm 
scolding the housemaid— that 's what I'm doing.'' She 
touches the biscuit-box. ' I ate five biscuits ; I ate your 
head ; I ate the room.' 

I do not altogether approve of this elation, and I draw 
the child back to earth by experimenting with word-orders. 
She admits that Scowlingly into the mirror look makes 
sense, but Into the mirror scowlingly look does not satisfy 
her. J 

' Now I think I '11 gather up.' 

1 Don't you want to do the other two ? ' 

'No.' 

As she gathers up she says the name of each part of 
speech except preposition. Turning to the sentence slips, 
she asks, ' Does it matter which way the sentences go ? ' 
'No, so long as they're in pairs.' She says over the 
alphabet to herself, and then announces, 'Auntie, I've 
put them in alphabetical order.' 

On this occasion I did not time the work, but I think it 
went on for rather more than half an hour. 

It may be objected that in thus making use of the names 
Verb, Noun, etc., Margaret is making use of words without 
meaning. But is it not rather the case that the meaning of 
those terms is soaking gradually into her mind, just as from 
her babyhood she has been gradually assimilating the 
meaning of the terms in common use around her ? I 
quite expect that if it were possible to continue her in- 
struction on these lines there would come a day when she 
would imagine that she had always known Verbs and 
Adjectives and their like just as she always knew tables 
and chairs and milk and biscuits. 



98 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

To me the great beauty of the Montessori method is 
that the activity produced in the child's mind is like an 
organic growth. We are not, as in most ordinary methods 
of education, constantly interfering with the wonderful 
natural development that takes place as the individual 
mind grapples with the material presented. We are not 
obscuring the matter for the child with a torrent of words 
which almost certainly fail to hit the rhythm of his growth. 
We are not clumsily pulling his half -formed ideas out into 
the light, thus prematurely causing them to assume rigidity. 
No, we are giving him wholesome food, and trusting to his 
natural intelligence to assimilate it. In this method so 
far as I can see over-pressure is impossible ; and progress, 
of which the speed will be determined by native endow- 
ment, is certain. 

With respect to some of the word exercises I was anxious 
to obtain a chart from Margaret showing how speed in- 
creased with practice. I usually made use of a stop-watch 
when she was working. She took an interest in this, but 
she had no sense of working against time, and I avoided 
introducing this element into our employment. I thought 
the gender game might be a good one for my purpose, so 
next day I suggested that she should do it. She took two 
minutes to arrange the eight masculines to her mind. 
She then read the first feminine, namely, sister-in-law. 
She looks down the masculine column in search of b, for 
she knows brother-in-law is what is required. 

She then takes duchess. ' I should think a duchess 
would belong to a duch. This' (duke) 'isn't a duck 
anyway or a swan. What is it ? Dook ? Aunt doesn't 
belong to the emperor, does it ? No, it belongs to the 
uncle. The girl, the girl, the boy, the duke, the duchess, 
the lioness, the lion, the lioness, the lion, the lioness ' (pause 
while arranging the slips more evenly), ' the lion'' (another 
pause to arrange), 'there now. The nic — the neek ' (ce 
sounds s, I interpolate), 'the niece, the nephew, does it 



A MONTESSORI EXPERIMENT 99 

belong to the nephew ? ' She reads over the column from 
the beginning. 'Nephew, no, nep, nep ' (ph says /) , 'is it 
the nephew ? Now the empress, empress ; what is the 
emperor and the empress ? ' (' Like a great big king.' It 
will be seen I make no attempt at anything but a very 
temporary definition, as I have no desire to interrupt the 
process that is going on.) ' Aren't they a great big king 
and queen ? Workman, workwoman. Why isn't it work- 
gentleman and worklady ? ' 

^ The exercise was now complete, having taken 10 minutes 
58 seconds. It was interesting that no inquiry as to the 
meaning of emperor had been made the first time the 
exercise was done. 

In the afternoon of this day Margaret did a singular and 
plural exercise, but she was not very keen on doing it, 
and in the end I did not succeed in getting enough material 
for a time chart. To do so would have meant urging the 
child, and that would have spoiled the whole thing. In 
the morning, when I asked her to do the gender exercise, 
she said ' Why not blue and green ? ' showing once more 
how right Dr. Montessori is in laying great stress on the 
attractive colouring of the cards. 

There was now an interval of about ten days during 
which no grammar study was done. The child was work- 
ing hard at writing, which really accorded better with her 
inner needs. The grammar games were, I think, just a 
trifle in advance of her stage, and so were carried on more 
than they should have been by my personal influence. 
Had my time with the child not been limited, the amount 
of work I had done with her would probably have been 
spread over a longer period. It must be clearly under- 
stood that I never put any pressure upon her, but the child 
knew that the ' games ' were made for her, and that I 
naturally liked her to use them. Children in general are 
much more keenly aware of the emotional attitude of their 
elders than as a rule these elders know. 



100 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

Our time together was drawing to a close ; so I suggested 
that she should do the two sentences of the Adverb game 
that she had not done on the previous occasion. She took 
it from its place, and began reading the names on the 
bundles. As before, she alternated the coloured slips 
with the white ones. 'Don't want two coloured ones 
together. Adverbs, you go there. Put these Nouns here. 
I have only two Prepositions.' (Reads) ' Go n-n-n-oisily 
to a chair— stamping your feet or talking does it mean ? ' 
She stamps off to a chair. ' I guess what the next one is. 
Go quietly to a chair. Go. Well, it isn't in the Preposi- 
tions. Shall I look in the Adverbs ? Got one of them 
here' (noisily). She then completed the sentence and 
began rearranging. ' Shall I see if this makes sense ? 
A chair to noisily go— Oh, that 's two coloured ones to- 
gether ' She rearranges by colour. I now intervene and 
make several changes. She at first refused to allow that 
Noisily to a chair go made sense, but finally she accepted 
all sensible arrangements. 

In her own speech Margaret has always used inversions 
to a considerable extent, and I find it hard to account for 
her narrow-mindedness with respect to the order of words m 
the sentences. It appears somewhat as if she had made 
up her mind at the beginning that only one arrangement 

could give sense. 

While I am interchanging the words I remark casually 
that these two, go and noisily, are the two that seem most 
able to move about. One often finds that a child takes 
hold of a casual remark like this much more readily than a 
piece of direct instruction. Yet I was rather surprised to 
find that this remark had been duly noted. 

When we passed to the companion sentence, Go quietly 
to a chair, I heard the child murmuring, ' I wonder if these 
(go and quietly) ' will be the two words I can move about 
like anything now.' . 

In making up this sentence Margaret was again led 



A MONTESSORI EXPERIMENT 101 

astray by looking only at the beginning of a word. She 
took quickly instead of quietly. I told her to look at it 
carefully. She then spelled over the two words, and con- 
cluded she would find quietly in the Adverb bundle. 
' Surely it must be here.' 

After the game was finished, we drifted somehow into a 
Verb game, in which the child performed actions and I 
supplied appropriate words. In the course of this she 
picked up a tray. ' You take,' said I. 'No,' she corrected, 
1 1 carry. I turn. I place,' performing the acts as she 
said the words. 

This spontaneous development of the work shows how 
much the exercises harmonise with the natural mode of 
growth of the child mind. 

In working with only one child it is not of course possible 
to create the spirit of a Montessori school. For Margaret's 
sake I often wished I had had some more little people 
about the same stage. At the same time for my own 
purposes one child was sufficient, for it was not always 
easy to take the full notes that I desired, and at the same 
time give just as much help as was required. I endeavoured, 
however, to maintain what I may call the Montessori 
atmosphere, and Margaret as usual was delightfully re- 
sponsive to my efforts. She is not, I am afraid, a very 
tidy child. She often throws her things down and knows 
not where she has put them. She loses her spades and 
leaves even her dolls behind her. If she goes on as she 
has begun she will never be able to keep an umbrella long. 
So I told her how tidy the little Montessori children were, 
how they had a place for everything and put everything 
in its place. In particular I told her of one little boy who 
soon after he went to a Montessori school developed such a 
mania for tidiness that he would wander round the room 
putting away all the things he could find, even the things 
the other children were using. This made a great im- 



102 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

pression. One morning when she was writing and drawing 
alternately, I heard her saying, ' I'm so tidy that I have to 
put away my pencil,' and a little later, ' I'm so tidy that 
I have to put away my chalks.' Thus while the chalks 
were being used the pencil was not allowed to cumber the 
table, but was restored to its proper place, and while the 
pencil was being used the chalks were tidily put away. 

Again one day I complained that she had flung her coat 
anyhow on my bed — not at all like a Montessori child. 
The following day I heard ' Jean ' showing Margaret how 
to fold it nicely. Jean was one of her multiple selves, a 
little girl we had picked up on the road one day because 
Margaret for some reason was of no use to us. Jean, I 
think, had been six months at a Montessori school, and so 
was much superior to Margaret. Besides she was two 
years older. 

Like most children, Margaret is apt at times to demand 
one's immediate attention in a very insistent way. I 
think I must once have told her that a Montessori child 
would not interrupt the teacher, but would wait very 
quietly till the teacher was ready. After this she would 
sometimes, when she had finished a line in her writing, put 
her copy-book behind her back and stand very impressively 
beside me till I looked up. Once she put an arm round my 
neck and whispered, ' You say " I wish that little girl was 
a real Montessori child ; — she 's taking a long time over 
those a's." ' I gratified her once or twice in this matter, but 
it seemed to me to be creating an artificial situation, so I 
endeavoured with success to let the practice die out. 



WRITING, READING, AND SPELLING 103 



CHAPTER VII 

WRITING, READING, AND SPELLING 

I was somewhat divided in my mind as to Margaret's 
instruction in writing. On the one hand there could be no 
doubt that the Montessori method of teaching the art is 
the best. On the other hand the sandpaper letters used by 
Dr. Montessori are script, whereas the modern fashion of 
print writing has been shown to be quicker, more legible, 
and in the opinion of many more beautiful. Hesitating 
thus between two methods, I made no serious attempt to 
teach the child to write until she was six — that is, past the 
age when according to Dr. Montessori's observations she 
ought to have begun. 

Dr. Montessori causes her children to obtain command 
of the pencil by giving them geometric insets made of 
metal which they trace round in colour. They fill in the 
design thus obtained with pencil strokes, which gradually 
grow finer, closer, and more regular. This work appeals 
to the children to an extraordinary degree. They work 
with enthusiasm, and soon obtain great facility in the use 
of the pencil. 

The first set of these insets is made in wood. The 
children are taught to feel round both inset and frame, and 
then to fit the former into the latter. When they take 
several insets and mix them, it is most interesting to see 
how perseveringly they will try to press one into a frame 
which, to the adult eye, will quite clearly not receive it. 
At our Free Kindergarten I have often watched little ones 
turning an inset about and pushing it down in the vain 
attempt to make it go in. The effect of these efforts is to 



104 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

train the child's eye so that by and by the futile attempts 
do not occur, and each inset is fitted directly into its own 
place. 

Dr. Montessori tells us that ' many children who have 
not arrived at the point of recognising a figure by looking 
at it, could recognise it by touching it ' — that is, by follow- 
ing the contour with the finger. 1 

During our early years we all obtain the eye training 
demanded by this exercise casually in the course of every- 
day experience. Any adult would place the insets at a 
glance. Probably so would a normal child of five or six. 
What I am beginning to ask myself is whether we as 
inevitably receive the touch training which, as Dr. 
Montessori has shown, seems naturally to precede it. 
Helen Keller says that when ' seeing people ' look at things 
they 'put their hands in their pockets.' 'No doubt,' 
she adds, ' that is one reason why their knowledge is often 
so vague, inaccurate, and useless.' 

When Margaret was five, I borrowed ten of the Mon- 
tessori insets, choosing the ones I thought most difficult 
and let the child try to fit them in. As I expected, she did 
this easily. About the same time she once or twice 
practised drawing round them and making designs. 

Some six or eight months later I took her with me to 
visit our Kindergarten in Reid's Court. Here she had an 
opportunity of trying her skill with all the wooden insets. 
She was very successful when her eyes were open, and 
notably unsuccessful when her eyes were shut. She was 
quite satisfied without getting the insets properly into 
the frames, even when she found the right hole. She 
fitted the circle into the quatrefoil frame and left it 
contentedly. 

At this time she had the sandpaper letters in her posses- 
sion for a week or two, but I saw no effect of the little 
practice she had with them on her epistles which were 
1 The Montessori Method, p. 198. 



WRITING, READING, AND SPELLING 105 

written in capital letters — the ones with which she 
had first been acquainted. (For specimens, cf. Fig. 4, 
p. 106.) 

In the summer of 1919 I saw that one could obtain 
grooved letters in the print script. I asked Margaret, 
now six, if I ordered them for her if she would work. ' Yes,' 
she said, and generously she kept her word. 

The day the letters arrived she worked with them for 
about an hour. I made a little copy-book for her of brown 
paper. She ran her finger round the groove three or four 
times and then made the letter with coloured chalk, then 
practised again, and then made another letter in the copy- 
book. The second day the child worked for fully an hour 
and a half, taking very little in the way of interval. As 
usual she was perfectly free to stop when she liked. She 
was carried on by the interest of the work. On the third 
day we started Book 4 of Nelson's Print Writing Copy 
Books. At the foot of each page is a picture for colour- 
ing ; I arranged with Margaret that she might colour 
one thing in the illustration for every line she wrote. 
It was significant that this practice soon ceased, though 
the picture was always highly appreciated when it 
came. 

One day I told Margaret of a Montessori child who 
practised a letter 120 times. She was writing o at the time 
and at once announced she would do it 120 times. She 
did it a great number of times, and then I noticed she 
had reversed the motion. Then she counted aloud, and 
practised 29 times. Her next practice consisted of 40 
times. Yet the two o's done after all that practice were 
the worst in the fine ; they both developed tails down the 
middle. 

Li looking at the work I always emphasised the words 
and letters that were well done, and said little or nothing 
about the others. Once I pointed to a very nice word and 
said, 'I can congratulate you upon that.' I shook hands 



106 FIVE YEARS OLD OK THEREABOUTS 

with her with some ceremony ; she promptly hugged me. 
Soon after she did a line in which she had omitted three 
letters. ' Can you greet me on anything in it ? ' she 







s tp , rt . 



^envou pot to me, , 



Fig. 4. 
SPECIMENS OF WRITING. 



inquired. Such ceremonies appeal to the primitive in the 
child, and are, I think, legitimate. (Cf . p. 27.) 

Writing was done on eighteen different days, by which 
time the copy-book was finished. The child welcomed a 



WRITING, READING, AND SPELLING 107 

wet day, because it would enable her ' to get on with her 
writing.' It must have been that day she worked between 
two and three hours. After each line was finished it was 
very usual for her to take a walk round the table or to give 
a little dance. She always stood while she was writing. 
The greatest number of lines done on any one day was 
eighteen. This occupied three pages, and therefore meant 
colouring three pictures as well. One of the three pages 
was done in the afternoon when I was not in the room, and 
did not know my school was going on. 

I had a little book on print writing in which are pictures 
of the right and the wrong methods of holding the pencil. 
This I showed to Margaret, and she several times asked for 
the book so that she might teach her fingers how to hold 
the pencil. The wrong method showed the fingers bent 
at a sharp angle. One day she said, ' Auntie, do you 
know what made me hold my pencil the wrong way ? 
Because when I was little I saw a lady in a shop hold it 
that way ' (demonstrates), ' and I copied her, because I 
thought grown-up people would be sure to do it the right 
way.' In this tale there may have been some truth ; for 
at three, when her favourite occupation was wrapping up 
parcels, she modified her method in imitation of ' the man 
in the shop.' Truly with such eager learners about, teachers 
are not confined to the schools. 

One day I tested Margaret's power of recognising the 
letters with her eyes closed. I tried <s first as being very 
characteristic. When I caused her finger to follow the 
groove several times, she said u. But when I allowed her 
to guide her own finger, she discovered it was s. For y 
she said first j, then v. She found e very difficult, suggest- 
ing first c, then g. These results I thought very interesting 
in view of what Dr. Montessori found in working with 
younger children. At the Free Kindergarten we have 
proved her statement that a young child will often recognise 
a letter by touch before he can by sight. 



108 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

Dr. Thomas, in his Aphasias of Childhood, gives notes of 
a case which is important in this connection. The boy, 
then about eight, was first seen by him in December 1904. 
At that time Dr. Thomas found his muscular memory 
good, his auditory memory very poor ; his visual memory 
he reinforced by motor memory. In 1906 he had im- 
proved ; he wrote his name readily, spelled it out with 
difficulty. He still reinforced visual impressions by motor, 
tracing out letters with his finger. In March 1908 this 
tracing of the letters with the tip of his finger was still his 
only way of reading words. He was a smart boy generally 
and good at number work. He was then (age thirteen) 
partially earning his living by selling papers, and could 
calculate with lightning rapidity the margin of profit on 
any number of halfpenny papers. 1 

This boy seems to have rested at the stage of the very 
young children who recognise a letter by tracing and not 
by sight — a stage which seems to have been omitted by 
Margaret. 

Now, is this difference due to a peculiarity of her 
mentality, or is it due to the fact that she has started this 
work rather late ? Has she perhaps missed the time of 
developing her touch sense ? Will she be able to retrieve 
her loss ? If not, what difference will it make ? Will she 
be poorer all her life, as Helen Keller's words might seem to 
suggest ? 

These questions are important, in view of the imminent 
establishment of nursery schools. In these schools we 
should have an opportunity of presenting Dr. Montessori's 
writing material at what she considers the right time ; 
but there are many people who think that reading and 
writing should be rigorously excluded. 

For example, in some excellent Suggestions regarding 
Nursery Schools, sent by the Bradford and District Branch 
of the Froebel Society to the Chairman and Members 
1 Public Health, May 1908. 



WRITING, READING, AND SPELLING 109 

of the Education Committee of the City of Bradford, 
I find towards the end in very black type : ' No formal 
work whatsoever in Reading, Writing, or Arithmetic 
should be expected from children in the Nursery 
School.' 

I do not suppose that this statement would ban in- 
struction by the Montessori method where the child is free 
to rise and go when he likes ; yet such statements would 
certainly tend to cause the teachers in such schools to 
concentrate their attention on other matters. Yet by so 
doing they may be doing an injustice to the child. 

One knows the spirit which dictates the attitude. It is 
one of sympathy with the little ones, and determination 
that the pernicious custom of sitting in rows while 
instruction is poured in shall not obtain in the nursery 
school. 

Every one who knows anything of little people will 
concur. How class teaching can be given even to five- 
year-olds is a thing that always amazes me. But why it 
should not be just as interesting to learn to write as to learn 
to draw is another thing I cannot understand ; and all 
little children love to draw. 

The question of reading and writing for the under- 
five child is one that should be settled by experiment, not 
sentiment. 

To come back to my doubts concerning Margaret. I 
have pretty well satisfied myself that her visual imagery 
is deficient, but I do not know whether that fact is im- 
portant in the present connection. 

Most adults who are made to trace a figure with their 
eyes shut visualise that figure ; and this image helps them, 
if they are required to reproduce it by drawing. I have, 
however, met with at least one student who said that, not 
having seen the figure, of course she could not visualise it. 
She drew it by motor memory. 

Would a child who was a better visualiser than Margaret 



110 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

have recognised the letters more easily by touch ? Yet the 
young children of course cannot be supposed to recognise 
by means of visualisation. 

It was rather interesting that just after my touch ex- 
periments with Margaret she found another means of motor 
expression : ' I '11 walk a curly s,' she said. 

It may seem that in these writing lessons I broke every 
rule of method. In particular I have often myself said 
that in view of the exhausting character of the lesson for 
little ones, it should be short — not more than ten or fifteen 
minutes. Yet I do not prevent Margaret from spending 
an hour and a half. 

It must, however, be remembered that of that hour and 
a half not all was spent on writing. With a stop-watch I 
made a practice of timing the lines. When I consider 
the figures thus obtained, I think that about a quarter of 
an hour was probably the time given to actual writing. 
The rest of the time was occupied by my consideration of 
the work done, by a comparison of the lines, by a walk 
round the table, or by colouring the pictures. The child's 
attention, however, was fixed on the writing practically 
all the time. 

Now in the infant class at school the children are not 
writing during the whole of the quarter of an hour. The 
teacher is advised to set the model on the blackboard, 
' for the children can then imitate both the result and the 
process by which it is reached, and the teacher can draw 
attention to the steps of the latter in some interesting chat 
as he goes along.' In such a lesson I wonder how much 
time is spent by the children in actual writing. 

Reading and Spelling. — In a former work I have said, 
' I am very sure that all children should have opportunities 
of learning to read long before they are six.' Margaret 
has had opportunities, but I cannot say I think she has 
been very keen to take advantage of them. She could 



WRITING, READING, AND SPELLING 111 

have taught herself to read two years ago if she had liked ; 
she had all the necessary knowledge ; she needed only 
practice. The world has to her, however, been so ' full of 
a number of things ' that she has never felt impelled to bury 
herself in a book. And her family is not sorry. Still it is 
rather a wonder to me that she is not yet able to read The 
Times. 

Margaret began to learn her letters just when she was 
learning to speak. She knew most or all of the capital 
letters by the time she was two ; by the time she was three 
she had forgotten a good many. 

Soon after she was three, some one taught her that b-o-o-k 
spelled book. When I found this out I gave her one or two 
other words beginning with b, including bad. ' Does good 
begin with b ? ' she said. 

At the time I took this as an indication that she was not 
ready for that kind of work yet. I may, however, have 
been mistaken, as I had plenty of examples later of a 
mechanical association temporarily running away with 
her common sense. 

There certainly was an increasing attention to sound 
about this time, as several of her remarks show. 1 

In September 1917 there must have been some further 
thought about sounds ; one day when her mother and I 
were talking, the child (now 4 J) suddenly interrupted with 
' Yes begins with d, doesn't it ? ' 

I did some words beginning with d with her, and she 
seemed to be getting the notion. As one of my examples 
I gave dove ; she promptly suggested pigeon. Later, 
when I gave dab, she capped me with tablet. I am not 
certain whether this was due to ear defect or whether it 
was a clang association. Some days later the young in- 
vestigator came to me first thing in the morning with the 
discovery that mutton begins with an m and ends with an 
n. I asked her what came in the middle and got the t. 
1 The Dawn of Mind, p. 166. 



112 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

She then announced, ' But begins with an m—m-m-m-m- 
but' This is certainly a clang association — a low type 
frequently found in certain people. The insertion of 
the sound m before ' but ' shows the effort of reason to 
justify the assertion brought about by mere mechanical 
association. We might, I think, regard this as an example 
of what is called Rationalisation — the practice of inventing 
reasons to bolster up our prejudices or over-hasty assertions 
— a temptation from which few of us are free. 

That the child's attention naturally turned to word 
sounds at this time was shown by the fact that every now 
and then she would make such remarks as, ' You need two 
s's for our road — twenty siks-s-s-s-s Clifton Gardens -s-s.' 
' Please spells with an .5 at the end.' ' Nose spells with an 
s at the end ; sweeties spells with an s at the beginning. 
Rocks spells with an s at the end. I 'm going to bake 
some rocks. Some spells with an s at the beginning and 
an m at the end.' 

No attention was paid by any of us to the mistakes 
involved in these statements by reason of the vagaries of 
our language. We let them pass with little or no comment. 

At this time Margaret was interested in trees and their 
names, so I thought I would try a little reading in con- 
nection with this interest. We fixed the leaves of Birch, 
Oak, Hawthorn, and Willow on to cards, and on slips I 
printed these words. The game was to take the slip, read it, 
and put it on the right leaf. Thus the child quickly learned 
these four words, and later several more leaves were added. 

My experiments were now interrupted, and reading and 
spelling fell rather into the background. In February 
the child told me in a letter she was ' beginning to get a 
reading lesson out of a book.' I believe she had asked her 
mother to teach her to read, and did receive one or two 
lessons. She could read simple one -syllable words pretty 
fluently. 

In March I gave her a box of letters, and we played at 



WRITING, READING, AND SPELLING 113 

making small words. She showed some tendency to 
confuse the end and the beginning ; for example, in making 
1 boot ' into ' boots ' she wished to add the s at the begin- 
ning. On one of the drawings of this period I found the 
letters h t i w, and the child explained that that meant it 
was to go with another. 

I now made some reading cards for her consisting of 
pictures, and corresponding slips with the names printed on 
them. The words were tambourine, wagtail, kettle, boot, 
hat, pig, giraffe, chicken, nigger, tree. My selection was 
largely determined by the pictures available and might 
have been much better. I had to give the pronunciation 
of the soft g, the ch, and the oo. Margaret made out all 
the words with no further help. Of course the pictures 
were lying in front of her, and possibly helped after she had 
found the beginning. Two days later we played again, 
but she did not recognise any of the words as wholes ; 
she had to sound them out. Nor did she guess much, 
even after she had got the beginning ; she conscientiously 
sounded the whole, before pronouncing it as a word. It 
was instructive to me to notice this ; in an intelligent 
child I should have expected rather more jumping to con- 
clusions, and perhaps in children of the impulsive type 
I should have had it. Also I might have had it, if I had 
had one or two more children in the ' school ' to speed up 
matters. I did not think it would be wise for me to attempt 
to do this myself. 

That summer she was five years of age. I was with her 
for some weeks at the seaside, but we did no reading, as 
there were many other interests, the chief one being playing 
with other children on the shore and in the garden. Early 
in December she could read her First Step in the Dale 
Readers, and her mother wrote that she was going ahead . 
But there was still no attempt to give her regular lessons. 

After Christmas she went to a Kindergarten, but had 
no reading there. 

H 



114 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

I did not do any further reading work with her until the 
time of my experiments with the Montessori English 
material. (See Chap, vi.) 

Spelling she enjoyed, and would spell phonetic words 
readily before she was five. Spelling should be made more 
of a game and less of a bugbear. We should realise that in 
the case of little children mistakes are of no importance, 
unless we emphasise them. 

Margaret's early attitude towards spelling seems to have 
been something like that of Humpty-Dumpty to words ; 
she thought she might spell any way she liked. After all, 
was this not very much the position of our ancestors in 
the Middle Ages ? The visible form of words was by no 
means so fixed then as it is now. 

The fluidity of the child's spelling was deeply impressed 
on me by the following instance. 

When in the summer of 1919 Margaret was working so 
hard at her copy-book, she had occasion to write the word 
little twenty -four times. Of these fifteen are correctly 
spelled. In practically all of the others the word is written 
litte. Soon after she returned home I had a letter from 
her in which the word was used twice within two lines ; 
the first time it was spelled litl, and the second time litul. 

It seems to me, then, that Margaret's spelling is still 
not yet fixed, and that as she comes to read more she will 
gradually come to adopt correct forms. But if she were 
worried about it and made to feel that to spell wrongly is a 
transgression, I should be much afraid that certain words 
might continue to be stumbling-blocks all her life. 

If for any reason I specially wished Margaret to learn to 
spell a word, I should write a letter while she was playing 
in the room and casually ask some one else how to spell the 
word ; I should not, unless a very favourable opportunity 
presented itself, attempt to teach her to spell. 

One of the advantages of our old Scottish village schools 
was that the little children were often necessarily present 



WRITING, READING, AND SPELLING 115 

when their elders were being taught ; and many a ' lad 
of pairts ' was found to have absorbed much of the teaching 
that was not intended for him at all. Of course in many a 
nursery the same thing happens. Baby playing on the 
floor is found to have learned nearly as much as the others 
who are doing lessons. To the reception of this knowledge 
the child simply surrenders his whole self ; he is not dis- 
tracted by the personality of the teacher. 

In schools we fairly often meet with children who have 
extraordinary difficulty in learning to spell. Once I was 
shown by a teacher the exercise of a boy who according to 
her account could 'not spell any word correctly except 
on and he spelled it no: On looking over the exercise I 
found that he spelled another word correctly in the same 
way. It was of, which he spelled jo. 

This reversal is rather a common form of mistake ; the 
child confuses saw and was, or writes rams for arms. One 
finds a similar disregard of the order of the sounds in speech ; 
thus Margaret said Jess for self for a long time, also misked 
for mixed, and on one occasion she remembered the word 
pistol as spitol. Again she confused b with d and p with 
q, and was uncertain how j should turn. Also in one or 
two of her drawings I have noted reversal of direction. 
Possibly all these things may be correlated with a general 
weakness of the sense of direction. There is need of more 
evidence in this matter. 

Dr. Thomas, who has done some work on the speech 
difficulties of children, attributes such spelling errors as I 
have instanced above to weakness in visual memory and a 
dependence on the motor memory. It fits in with this 
theory that Margaret's visual images are deficient, and 
that her memory does seem to be strongly motor. On the 
other hand, if we consider the confusion between b and d, 
the form memory is there whether visual or not in 
character ; it is simply the direction memory that is lack- 
ing. I believe memory for form and memory for direction 



116 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

have been distinguished by certain American investigators ; 
but one would think that memory for direction would go 
with motor memory quite as much as with visual memory. 

Margaret's spelling is eccentric, but in what I have seen 
lately I have not seen any signs of a tendency to reverse the 
position of the letters. She seems to be guided by sound, 
and she is not very consistent. In a recent letter she 
spelled ' saw ' so ; and she spelled ' wrote ' rot. Of course 
she knows that o does make different sounds. 

This summer (1919), when Margaret was arranging some 
words in alphabetical order, she showed me ' picture,' and 
asked me if it was e. I said, ' How could you think picture 
began with an e ? ' She replied, ' You see, auntie, I 'm 
not in the habit of knowing which is the beginning and 
which is the end of words.' At the time I noted this re- 
mark, I added that I had not noticed this confusion, and 
mentally I put this down as an interesting instance of 
Margaret's ever- ready 'explanations.' But in going over 
my old notes I see that there is some evidence in favour 
of her statement, as I have shown above. 

It may seem to many that the way in which Margaret 
has been taught to read is of a too spasmodic and un- 
systematic character. It may be so. In her case it has 
happened without design ; but at the same time I think 
there is a good deal to be said for it. If a child reads 
fluently before he is six he might easily develop a habit of 
reading a great deal. This would have the advantage of 
increasing his vocabulary very rapidly, but the meaning he 
assigned to all his new words would probably not be very 
clear cut. Unless he found opportunity and was encouraged 
to use this vocabulary, it might readily conduce to cloudi- 
ness of mental outlook. 

Again, the young child's intelligence being not yet on a 
very high level, the reading material that would interest 
him might be such as would not forward his progress. And 
the time he spent on this reading might easily be better 



WRITING, READING, AND SPELLING 117 

spent on outdoor pursuits and on finding out about things. 
One would be glad to have evidence with respect to the 
subsequent history of children who began to read very 
early. In our biographical literature there is some 
available, but so far as I know it relates mostly to infant 
prodigies . 

Lady Glenconner says of one of her boys, ' His was 
quite a wide range of reading at six years old ; at seven he 
discovered for himself La belle Dame sans merci, and he 
had distinct views on what he read. " Now I 'm very 
fond of Marryat," he would say in a tone of zest, " so full 
of happenings, and all so real and exciting. Not always 
about Love, like Shakespeare." ' 

It behoves us to recognise that when we give to a child 
the power of reading we launch him on an uncharted sea 
which is not without its shoals and its sandbanks, its rocks 
and its whirlpools. When the little child learns to walk 
and thus gains for himself the possibility of an environ- 
ment beyond his mother's ken, that mother often feels 
some pangs of fear. But when the child escapes from us 
and is free of the printed page, what a much greater escape 
it is ! and yet how little thought we give to its dangers 
and its delights ! 

I am not one of those who would prevent the child, once 
he can read, reading anything he wishes to. There are 
certain books that I should try to keep out of his way — 
books of which the style is bad or the thought on a low 
level. If he came upon such books and wished to read 
them I do not think I would forbid him, but I should read 
them myself also, and lead him to talk about them to me. 
He that has known the best from childhood is not likely 
to prefer the worst. 

In our schools we give too much time to acquiring the 
art of reading and too little time to cultivating a taste for 
what it is good to read. We should read to the children, 
and what we have chosen as worthy to lay before them we 



118 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

should read over and over again as often as they desire it. 
They should act it ; they should make pictures under its 
inspiration ; they should quote it. A book is not like an 
orange of which the last squeezed drop is bitter ; it must be 
squeezed, if you wish to gain the heart of its sweetness. 
In Chapters iv. and v. I have set forth some of the methods 
I would employ and the measure of success that attended 
them. My present point is that for the children only the 
best is good enough.* We should choose their reading in 
the spirit of the kings of old who brought gold and frank- 
incense and myrrh to a Babe lying in a manger. 



NUMBER 119 



CHAPTER VIII 

NUMBER * 

Psychological Development of the Number Concept. In 
a previous work I have given a detailed account of the 
way in which the concept of number developed in 
Margaret. 2 

In the fiftieth month she could count things with con- 
siderable correctness, but if one asked her without offering 
any concrete help, ' What is one more than six ? ' she had 
to count from the beginning. She could name up to six 
spots at a glance, the spots being arranged as on playing- 
cards ; the six she recognised as two threes. 

I make no doubt I could easily have ' speeded up ' 
Margaret's progress in number work, but I was by no 
means concerned to do so. I think, however, her early 
baby play with numbers was of real importance for 
the stability of the erection for which it is the founda- 
tion. 

Children of five often come to school knowing nothing 
of number. An infant mistress told me recently that this 
was the case with ten out of a newly enrolled class of fifty. 
These children are apt to be hurried in their development. 
There is not time to let the idea of number soak into them. 
It is, I think, very unlikely that any of them will make 
much of the subject. 

It should be one of the functions of the nursery school to 
provide material out of which the child may form clear 
ideas of number in his own way and at his own time. 

1 Part of this chapter was published in The Child, June 1918, 
ed. T. Kelynack, M.D. 

2 The Dawn of Mind, pp. 61-68, 



120 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

At four and a quarter Margaret was still working her way 
up to the adult point of view. 

One morning I was out with her when she said, ' Cocoanut 
ice spends with two pennies.' Spends, I suppose, meant 
costs. When we looked in her purse we found she had 
three pennies. 

' How much is three pennies ? Is it ninepence ? ' 

Some explanation must have followed, and she con- 
tinued, ' Eight pennies is eightpence, and four pennies is 
fourpence and one penny is onepence. Why didn't 
mother give me twelve pennies, and then I would buy a 
dollies' house and put all my dollies in it.' 

' You would need a big one for all your dollies.' 

' But Cossack would hold a small one, wouldn't it ? ' 

Cossack was a small doll, and this is an interesting 
inversion of the true relationship — analogous in some 
respects to the one given above — ' spends.' 

When asked one more than anything over four or five, 
the child still always counted from the beginning. One 
day I had asked her several questions of this type. At 
last I asked, ' One more than twenty ? ' ' Oh, I can't do 
th-a-a-at.' 

By this time she had learned Dominoes and Old Maid 
and could play both satisfactorily. 

At Christmas, Margaret, then four and a half, was putting 
kisses on her Christmas cards. She still found some diffi- 
culty in counting when she put many. ' Put as many as I 
won't count one kiss twice.' 

Counting was much more careful now ; but she could 
not tell what two and three made till I held up two fingers 
and three ringers for her to count. 

She hit upon the plan of making use of spatial reference 

in much the same way as Professor Sully's boy. 1 I asked 

her how many people would be at supper. She counted 

the two in the room, then pointed in the direction of another 

1 Studies of Childhood, Sully, 



NUMBER 121 

room, saying ' three, four,' then pointed outside, ' five.' 
She also used the device of dabbing her fingers on the table 
for each absent person that she had to count. Her thought 
was evidently still bound up in the concrete. 

When she was threading beads she seemed able to do 
three and two alternately, or two and one alternately, 
quite as easily as two and two or one and one. This is not 
usually the case with our kindergarten children. 

About this time I tested her with playing-cards. She 
named them all correctly in 2 minutes 26 h seconds. She 
had to count the tens and eights, unless two came in 
immediate succession. I then dealt out the cards two at a 
time, asking the child to name the cards and give the total 
number of spots. She went wrong with a 7+8, and a 
9+10. To obtain the total she counted both cards, always 
beginning with One. In only one case, 2+1, did she give 
the answer without counting. To thirteen such little sums 
she took 7 minutes 47 seconds. (Cf . with Mary, Graph 3.) 

My next experiments were in spring (age 4|). In 
Addition when counting the total of two groups the child 
would still begin with One. Once she succeeded in giving 
5+6 without counting. She could do 3-2, 2x2, 2+2, 
2+2 in her mind. The examples were generally in concrete 
terms, e.g. ' If two cakes were divided between you and 
me, how many would there be for each ? ' Her first reply 
to this was ' Two halves.' 

At this time Margaret was fond of playing school with 
me, and I made for her a few number games. 

The first was intended to teach her the figures. I 
divided a card into nine compartments. In each I put a 
figure, and the number of dots indicated by the figure. 
This was the key card. Margaret had some knowledge 
of the appearance of the figures, as we had often looked at 
them on gates, and elsewhere. I made also a second card 
with a figure in each of its compartments. I gave my 
' school ' some slips of cardboard, and told her she was to 



122 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

put the right number of them on each figure. This kept 
her busy for some time. She got all the numbers right 
except 5, where she put about eight. When she was 
rilling up the 8 compartment she counted three, then said, 
1 Now, three more to make six,' and then got seven and 
eight. The realisation of number relations that goes on 
within the child's own mind is of course the valuable part 
of an exercise like this. During the operation the teacher 
should withdraw altogether. 

Three or four days later the child spontaneously went 
for the number card, and played the game again. 

My next game was an addition game. On little squares 
of cardboard I drew the figures and also the signs + and = . 
I made pictures of simple objects in groups, and the game 
was to place the correct symbols underneath, thus :— 




a m s a 



The first sum given was 5+2 as above. My little pupil 
remembered the result of adding these two numbers, and 
did not need actually to count. The next I gave was 4+3. 
Here she had to count, and obtained the answer 7. 



^ H> 



^£j? 



^ ^E» 3J 



a 



s m b m 



' Why, it 's the same. ... If you put one along here it 
would be . . .' She left the sentence unfinished, but 



NUMBER 123 

evidently she had made the interesting and important 
discovery that a slight alteration of the grouping would 
give 5+2, as she had had before. 

A few days later her growing mastery of number appeared 
in one of her doll plays. She was playing school with 
1 Teddy. 1 

Teacher, ' What is one and two ? ' 

Teddy (known by his squeaky voice), ' Four.' 

Teacher, ' No. What is one and two ? ' 

Teddy, ' Four.' 

Teacher (with increasing emphasis), 'No. What is one 
and two ? ' 

Teddy, ' Four. Three conies after four.' 

I had also taught the sign — ; but I had not been quite 
satisfied with my concrete representation. Probably this 
was because subtraction is more necessarily an actual 
process than addition. It introduces change in actuality, 
whereas addition may be just a change in the point of 
view. 

The best plan would be to have cards with the different 
groups on them, and when one was working 7—2 put the 
5 card and the 2 card together to represent the 7, and then 
actually take away the 2 group. It might possibly be 
better to do the whole thing with units — counters or 
buttons or pictures. 

A number game like this might easily be made to give 
also training in logical thought. For example, 5 violets 
-f4 primroses =9 flowers ; 3 chairs +4 tables =1 articles 
of furniture ; 2 horses +3 cows =5 animals. An intelligent 
child would take pleasure in finding the general term under 
which to subsume the two classes mentioned. I am sorry 
I have not yet tried this game with Margaret. 



124 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

At this period we had little time for number, for we were 
busy with many other things. However, one morning I 
taught her the notation of the tens. We took her beads, 
and by threading ten of them and tying the ends of the 
thread we made several rings. I showed her that when we 
wanted to write ten we put down a 1 and a 0, which meant 
one group of ten, or one ring, and no loose beads. Eleven 
was written a 1 and then another 1, for it meant one 
group of ten, or one ring, and 1 loose bead. When we 
came to twenty we were able to take two rings, and so we 
wrote it 2 and a 0. She easily saw that three tens were 30, 
and so on to 90. She told me ten tens were a hundred, 
a word with which she had been long familiar ; but this 
may have been a guess. I do not know if any one had 
ever told her ten tens made a hundred. 

The child seemed to understand the idea quite well. 

Three days later I gave her a sum of which the answer 
was ten, and she remembered how to write it. At this time 
she was not yet able to write all the figures apart from 
copies. She did not remember how to write fifteen, which 
she wanted as the answer to another sum. 

At this time I began to teach the sign X also with 
pictures, thus : — 



JM JJf ^4_f 



X 



(n a m 



Altogether I made not more than nine slips like those 
illustrated. They were not much used. Their chief 
importance consists in their power to give the child ideas 
which affect her attitude to experience. 

In summer I spent about six weeks with Margaret, now 



NUMBER 125 

five and two months. A favourite morning occupation 
when she waked was saying over the number names. She 
was still uncertain at the tens. One morning she counted 
' Forty nine, forty ten, forty eleven, forty twelve.' She 
then changed to fifty and went on correctly. 

In face of many other interests number was neglected at 
this time. 

The only point of interest was that one day her mother 
began asking what are four ones, seven ones, etc. The 
child could not tell without counting. I spread my fingers 
for her. For twenty ones she said she would need all her 
fingers and all her toes ; yet she could not tell that twenty 
ones are twenty. Then her mother began asking, ' How 
many are five apples ? ' This she knew. ' How many 
are five ones ? ' And thus she got the idea. 

The incident was of value as showing how hard it is for 
an adult to see where a child's difficulties will come. 

At Christmas a first card test showed no improve- 
ment. 

A few days later I tried another. The child named all 
the thirty-nine cards (I don't use the ace of spades) in 
1 minute 42 seconds. She named all correctly except one 
8 and one 10. A second chance took 2 minutes 35 
seconds. She counted one 10 and one 9, and went wrong 
with two 8's. 

I now dealt out the cards two at a time, asking Margaret 
to add. This test gave very interesting results, as it seemed 
to mark a breaking away from the concrete. 

The first pair of cards dealt out was 10 and 9. The child 
kept repeating these two numbers for about half a minute ; 
she then had to count, taking three-quarters of a minute 
in all. 

The second pair was 7 and 5. The child counted at once, 
beginning with 1. 

Eight and three. ' Eleven.' No counting perceptible. 

Four and three. ' Seven.' 



126 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

Three and two. ' Five.' This answer was given 
slowly, as if the preceding activity had been fatiguing. 

The next three pairs, 6 and 5, 4 and 5, 7 and 8, were all 
counted. 

Then came 7 and 4. ' Seven and four more — seven, and 
two more — nine, and two more — eleven.' 

Next 7 and 6. ' Seven and two more — nine ; seven and 
three, one more after nine — ten ; and one more after 
ten — eleven ; and one more — twelve, and one more — 

THIRTEEN.' 

The calculation was done in a whisper without looking 
at the cards. The final answer came out in a loud 
triumphant tone. 

Several more additions were done without much altera- 
tion of method. Thus 8 and 6. ' Eight and six more ; 
eight and one more — nine ; eight and two more, one after 
nine — ten ; eight and three more, one after ten — eleven . . .' 
and so on until she arrived exultantly at fourteen. 

Thus she escaped from the concrete, and from the idea 
that she must begin her calculation by counting from 1 
at the same moment. 

At this time she knew the two-time multiplication table, 
but when I tried her, I found she did not know it out of 
order, and she required to have the sums said for her. She 
could not herself say it straight through. I don't know 
whether any one had taught her or she had just picked 
it up. 

The whole test took 9 minutes 47 seconds. 

It will be noticed that my little pupil took longer to the 
test than she had done a year earlier. This is because she 
is not now satisfied just to count the spots, which no doubt 
she could have done more quickly than at age four and a 
half ; — especially as she had realised that there was no 
need to count both cards. But she was now aiming at 
something more difficult than just counting ; she was 
aiming at winning her freedom from the concrete material. 



NUMBER 127 

I need scarcely say that I never urged her not to count ; 
her changes of method have been quite spontaneous. 

The following day Margaret asked to do the cards again. 
This time she did the exercise in 8 J minutes, in spite of the 
fact that there was a little interruption. Her method she 
abbreviated somewhat ; thus, ' Six and four ; one after 
six — seven ; two after six — eight ; three after six — nine ; 
four after six — ten. 

In the course of this test she put the interesting question, 
8 Is it eight and nine or nine and eight ? ' 

' Would there be any difference ? ' I asked. 

' It would make a difference, wouldn't it ? ' 

In spring Margaret named the cards in 2 minutes 16 
seconds. She had to count one 10, one 8, and one 7. The 
addition sums she did in 5 minutes 16 seconds. There was 
more counting with the finger than at Christmas. I think 
she always took the larger number first, and sometimes she 
counted on from it by eye only. She looked less away from 
the cards than she had done on the previous occasion. 

In the afternoon the additions were done in 4 minutes 
11 seconds. 

The following day naming the cards took 1 minute 17 J 
seconds. The additions took 3 minutes 25 seconds. 

The addition associations seem now ripe for mechanisa- 
tion, and probably a little intensive practice would be the 
right thing ; but this has not been given yet. Not much 
would be required, I fancy. 

One experiment in summer showed that the child, then 
six, could name the cards in 1 minute 28 seconds. The 
additions took 3 minutes 27 seconds. In doing the 
additions she had to count almost always, but she never 
thought it necessary to count both cards. 

When I next meet Margaret, if I take up number work 
with her, I shall aim at mechanising the associations re- 
quired for addition by practice with the cards dealt out two 
at a time, and by other easily devised number games. 



128 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

Possibly with the aid of the stop watch I shall make a chart 
showing her how her speed increases. About ten minutes 
every second or third day would suffice. 

I shall also continue the concrete study of the multiplica- 
tion table, and I shall begin to mechanise the associations 
involved in this. 

If she seems ready, I might do a little work with money 
and weights and measures. I have already tried one or 
two experiments with an inch ruler and with a half -pint 
measure, but these I think were tried before the child was 
five, and as she did not press me much to continue them 
I concluded she was not yet ripe for them. 

It will be seen that Margaret's arithmetical instruction 
stretches over a pretty long period of time. Yet the 
actual hours which have been devoted to it are com- 
paratively few, and the child, if not a prodigy, is quite 
sufficiently advanced for her age. 

Valuable suggestions for school practice are, I think, 
embedded in the facts I have recorded. Margaret's time 
is too precious for me to give her a number lesson every 
day, even if I had the opportunity. She has to give most 
of it to language study and to nature study and to acquiring 
control over her body. She has to gather buttercups and 
daisies, to skip, to run, to jump, to educate her dolls, and 
to do the hundred other things that an energetic child does. 
What she requires in number, during the early years when 
foundations are being laid, is an occasional short, clear 
lesson, and then to be let alone till it has soaked in. 

It is now generally believed that the ability to read 
implies a certain special brain development ; that in teach- 
ing a child to read we are bringing about definite alterations 
in the nerve cells or their connections. Very probably the 
same is the case with regard to number. In these subjects, 
then, no child should be held to a lesson when he shows 
signs of fatigue, and no child should be given a lesson if he 
shows unwillingness to receive it. In the early years it is 



NUMBER 129 

all-iinportant to avoid nervous fatigue and to promote 
stability of development. Brain growth goes on in the 
intervals between lessons as much as or more than while 
the lessons are going on. The intervals play an all-im- 
portant part in the promotion of stability, and the best 
guide to the most favourable interval and to the most 
favourable length of lesson is found in the attitude of the 
individual. 

In both reading and arithmetic we find in our schools 
cases of extremely slow development. Children who fail 
to learn to read when every opportunity is given them are 
termed word-blind. If such children are not mentally 
defective, however, the blindness is probably not absolute, 
i.e. by proper educational method they may in time 
acquire the ability to read. In these cases longer lessons 
are never to be regarded as ' proper educational method.' 

No special name has yet been proposed for the children 
who are deficient with respect to number. Often the 
defect disappears with the child's growth. This change 
arises out of the child's inner history, and often seems a 
miracle to the teacher. Sometimes a child who has been 
regarded as hopeless at arithmetic all through the junior 
classes comes at ten, or even twelve, into his numerical 
kingdom, and takes a good place among his fellows. These 
retardations may be due to congenital slowness of brain 
development. They may also be due to defects of our 
educational system, which presumes that a child is being 
taught arithmetic when he is in a room where some one is 
teaching it. Many a University student knows how, if 
one point is missed in a mathematical lecture, the rest of 
the demonstration is mere sound signifying nothing. 
Similarly, if a little child misses the crucial point, his mind 
either becomes confused or seeks refuge in daydreams. If 
failure is frequent, he may give up arithmetic as a subject 
altogether beyond him. A habit of daydreaming may be 
established, which may account for the startling answers 

i 



130 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

with which such a child enlivens the classroom routine. 
It is comforting to the teacher to set such defect down to 
brain conditions. At the same time she should recognise 
that remedial measures should be taken at once. Such a 
child, if kept with his classmates, is certainly wasting his 
precious time, and is probably acquiring harmful mental 
habits. 

The normal child early feels an attraction towards 
number. We see this in baby's enjoyment of plays with 
his fingers and toes. We see it in the way the older child 
picks up and uses number words before they have meaning 
for him, and in the counting tasks he sets himself later ; 
railings, steps, the window-panes in church and elsewhere, 
the people that pass, paving-stones, bricks in a wall — all 
these things and many more make a numerical appeal to 
children, who spontaneously take full advantage of the 
material thus provided. Skipping and ball - bouncing 
offer very attractive number material. Some children aim 
at counting up to an immense number — ' the last number 
in the world,' as one little girl put it. This same child 
attempted to count the stars, and was much aggrieved by 
her failure. Fired by the example of other children or on 
a slight suggestion from older people, the little ones will 
aim at counting by twos, threes, and so on, thus securing 
familiarity with the tables. By all these methods an 
immense amount of valuable practice both in counting 
things and in the succession of the number names is secured. 

Such number practice should be encouraged, and we 
should make no attempt to hurry progress. It is very 
probable that the children who do not show normal de- 
velopment in the arithmetic classes are children who have 
avoided all this early number work. The time, which is 
very much less than that shown on the time-table, and the 
attention, often a vanishing quantity, that they devote to 
the subject in schools, cannot possibly bring such children 
up to the level of their classmates. Such considerations 



NUMBER 131 

serve to suggest that the arithmetical dunce is made, not 
born, and that his number ' bump ' may develop quite 
normally if we can hit on a method which will compensate 
for his early neglect of the subject. 

That this is a sound conclusion seems to be indicated by 
the following case : About four years ago my attention 
was called by an infant mistress to a little girl who was 
very backward in arithmetic. Mary was eight and a half 
years of age, but could make nothing of number, and was 
still in the ' baby ' class. Her reading was satisfactory, 
and her general intelligence fairly good. She knew the 
names of the number series, and could count things pretty 
well. When asked what six and one make, she replied, 
' Nine.' When I held up six fingers and said, ' How many 
more to make seven ? ' she said, ' Four.' All such questions 
led to wild guessing. I gave her a set of dominoes. She 
took to the game readily and played it at home. For more 
systematic training I used ordinary playing-cards, having 
beans at hand when more mobile units were required. 
At the beginning Mary could name the one, two, and three 
groups without counting ; she confused the five group 
with the four group, and gave poor guesses at the higher 
groups. I spent some time in analysing the arrangements 
as they appear on the cards, and the child began to realise 
the nine, for example, as two 4's and a 1. About the sixth 
lesson I began to deal the thirty -nine number cards out to 
her, requiring her to name each in succession (the ace of 
spades was omitted). I timed the proceedings with a 
stop-watch. Obviously any thinking or counting on her 
part prolonged the exercise considerably. Graph 1 shows 
how her speed increased. After a few days, with the in- 
tention of mechanising certain number combinations, I 
added another exercise. I set down ten little sums on this 
model : 5+4= , and required the child to read them 
thus : ' Five and four are nine.' The time required for 
the whole ten sums I noted. The results are shown in 



132 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 



Graph 2. Both these exercises were, as a rule, performed 
two or even three times in succession ; the results recorded 
in the charts are the first for each day. 



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A month after Mary first came to me — about the six- 
teenth lesson — I began to deal out the cards two at a time, 
directing her to add the numbers thus shown. As usual I 
timed the process. I made no attempt to hurry the child ; 
I showed her the watch, told her how long she had been, 



NUMBER 133 

and sometimes compared with a previous trial. I showed 
my pleasure when improvement appeared, but I en- 
deavoured not to show disappointment when the opposite 
was the case. I wished to avoid effort on Mary's part, for 
I considered a certain placidity of mind the most favourable 
condition for rendering the combinations required auto- 
matic. The results are shown in Graph 3. 

Mary's attitude towards number groups was that of a 
child of four or five. In the course of the eighth lesson I 
arranged twelve beans in two groups of 8 and 4. By 
counting she succeeded in making out that 8 and 4 are 
equal to 12. I then moved one bean from the 8 and put it 
with the 4. The whole counting process had to be gone 
through again for her to realise that it was now a case of 7 
and 5 making up 12. 

Dealing with numbers in concrete form was extra- 
ordinarily difficult. At the thirty -fourth lesson I asked 
Mary how many twos there are in eight. Even with the 
card 8 before her she could scarcely succeed in finding out. 
By the thirty-fifth lesson she knew with lightning rapidity 
that five and four made nine ; yet the question, What is 
five from nine ? left her absolutely at sea. 

After about three months' coaching (forty lessons) my 
little pupil got her remove in school and began to do simple 
addition sums. A year after I made her acquaintance she 
could do both addition and subtraction fairly well, if one 
held her to the work ; if left alone she was very apt to let 
her attention slip, and then numerous absurd errors would 
creep in. The multiplication tables were learned without 
difficulty and quite satisfactorily. Much mental con- 
fusion was still produced by any question directed towards 
the intelligent treatment of numbers ; for example, ' If 
you had twenty beans, to how many children could you 
give one each ? ' The actual production of the beans did 
not seem to help. 

When I last saw Mary she was beginning to use her 



134 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

multiplication tables in connection with such questions as 
' How many 8's in 56 ? ' but it was still easy to produce 
complete mental bewilderment. Hence it may be said 
that Mary's attitude towards number is not yet very in- 
telligent ; but at least she is able to do with fair speed and 
accuracy addition, subtraction, and multiplication, and 
is thus able to share the work of her class and to progress 
with the others. 

The great difficulty that she has with concrete number 
work probably arises from the fact that in early childhood 
she did not have nearly enough number experience. We 
hardly, I think, appreciate the enormous difference in ex- 
perience that there may be between children who have as 
nearly as possible the same environment. Psychologists 
have again and again sought to bring home to us by words 
and illustrations that the kind of world we live in depends 
on selective attention. But we do not yet realise nearly all 
that is involved if this statement be true. 

Probably most people depend chiefly on their social en- 
vironment for the direction — at least the initial direction — 
of their attention. Thus a chance quotation made by a 
friend may, by its influence on my subsequent activities, 
make known to me a new world in literature. The little 
child is particularly dependent on those around him for 
the guidance of his attention, for he is outside the juris- 
diction of the written word. If he were left entirely to 
himself, the numerical aspect of the world might easily 
escape his notice altogether. 

Fortunately, numerical concepts play such an important 
part in practical life that most children have their thoughts 
turned to them at an early age. So long, however, as we 
allow the introduction of number to the baby mind to be a 
matter of chance, so long shall we continue to find five- 
year-olds who, on entering school, are far behind their 
fellows in their capacity to receive arithmetical instruction. 

It should be one of the functions of the nursery school to 



NUMBER 135 

direct the little ones' attention to number. The children 
themselves form excellent material, as they march in single 
file or take partners or ' form fours.' On a country walk 
the children can always be interested in — will themselves 
sometimes start — number conversations about the things 
they see. In plays and games the teacher must be ready 
every now and then to emphasise in a natural unforced 
way the number aspect. The children will thus be led to 
think about number, and they will go on to experiment by 
constantly applying this mode of conceiving things to their 
environment of the moment. 

This experimental stage forms the only firm foundation 
for subsequent number work. It belongs naturally, I 
think, to the fourth and fifth years, and may without harm 
be prolonged through the sixth. It is essentially a self- 
directed activity ; the teacher's part is to initiate and 
guide by means of very brief suggestions. She must 
waken ideas in the child's mind, and trust to his intel- 
ligence to work them out according to his own mental 
needs. When this is done carefully and systematically, our 
infant -class mistresses will, I believe, cease to meet with 
children who can make nothing of number. 



136 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 
CHAPTER IX 

SICK CHILDREN 

In this chapter I do not propose to treat of ailments of the 
body. Indeed of them I am not qualified to treat, and 
expert advice is easily obtained. The children whom I 
have now in view are sick not in body but in mind. They 
receive less sympathy than the physical weaklings, yet 
probably they need more. Samuel Butler in Erewhon 
depicts a country where phj^sical illness is treated as a 
misdemeanour and punished ; whereas moral obliquity 
meets with sympathy and help. 

Now with regard to children this attitude to moral 
defects is undoubtedly the right one. Many of us more or 
less deliberately adopt it ; and there are various signs that 
even the legislature, as represented by enlightened magis- 
trates in the children's courts, is beginning to recognise 
that the position is a tenable one. It is perhaps natural 
that the younger the children are, the more ready are the 
adults about them to adopt this point of view. One often 
hears a sympathetic mother or nurse commiserating a 
little person for having a ' pain in his temper.' In Erewhon 
the morning salutation is ' I hope you are good ' ; and in 
certain circumstances it is only polite to say, ' I hope you 
have recovered from the snappishness from which you were 
suffering when I last saw you.' One can scarcely imagine 
a tactful person in this country addressing such remarks 
to any one but a child ; but many children would take 
them in good part. 

Children's misfortunes too are sometimes treated in the 
Erewhonian matter. We have all met the Spartan mother 
who gives her child something to cry for. One of Margaret's 
early questions suggests that she thought there was some- 



SICK CHILDREN 137 

tiling to be said for such treatment. I was telling her a 
tale of ' the little baby ' falling. ' Did you smack me ? ' 
she inquired. ' Did I be naughty 'cause I tumbled ? ' 

About the same period Margaret happened to be telling 
me about the famous old woman of the shoe and her many 
children — ' She gave them some broth 'out any bread, 
and whipped them all round and put them to bed.' ' Why 
did she whip them ? ' I asked idly. ' 'Cause they spilt,' 
she replied without a second's hesitation. 

Table manners are often a serious problem to an anxious 
mother. The more she seeks to train the child to eat 
nicely and to sit nicely, the worse the child becomes. In 
some houses one cannot eat a meal happily, because the 
children are so constantly being found fault with for in- 
fringement of decorum. 

Now it is quite true that the more the mother checks the 
child, the worse the child becomes ; but very few mothers, 
though they observe and comment on this fact, learn from 
it the obvious lesson, which is that they should try another 
method. It is no more right to find fault with a child at 
table than it is with an adult, and we should no more think 
of doing it. 

Are we then not to teach the child how to behave ? 

Certainly ; but the children who are constantly being 
found fault with know quite well how to behave. We 
have only to listen to them instructing their dolls or younger 
children to realise this. 

From the very beginning a child should be taught to eat 
tidily, not to fill his mouth too full, to notice how awkwardly 
liquids behave if spoons are held in certain positions, to 
like his bread cut in neat pieces. After he knows these 
things, and is able to manage almost or entirely for himself 
at the family meal, we should treat him with the same 
politeness and consideration that we show to the other 
members of the party. Imitation will generally suffice 
to keep him on the right lines. 



138 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

Much fault-finding will practically always increase the 
fault it is meant to cure, just as many cautions will induce 
recklessness. 

How often we hear the anxious mother offering to her 
child the poor consolation that she told him he would fall, 
if he were not careful. He might reasonably reply, ' And 
it was just your overtelling that made me careless, and so 
brought about my fall.' 

I know it is difficult to refrain from a word of warning, when 
we see our little ones adventuring forth ; but as a rule nature 
tells them to be careful far more effectively than we can, 
and we shall be well advised to leave this work in her hands. 

It is of very special importance that all fault-finding 
should be avoided at meal times, for enjoyment is essential 
to digestion, and how can even a child enjoy a meal accom- 
panied by a running fire of unfavourable criticism ? 

It is well known now to psychologists that the child's 
natural and, within limits, wholesome desire to be noticed 
may lead to almost incredible naughtiness. To make much 
of a child's offence, especially perhaps to tell other people 
about it, is a very good method of bringing about a re- 
petition of the offence. 

Of course the child doesn't know the source of his own 
naughtiness. He is often greatly troubled by it, and he 
acquiesces, one might almost say, with joy in his own 
punishment. And the more impressive the punishment is, 
the more certain is the repetition of the fault. Neglecting 
it, treating it as a babyish act which will disappear of 
itself as the child gains sense, will often effect a cure. 

Inexplicable crying or screaming fits which are sometimes 
a great worry to mothers may arise in much the same way. 

' Once a mother consulted me about her two-year-old 
daughter who had terrible crying fits at night. The 
mother had done everything to break her off the habit. 
She had even spanked her. Of course I stopped that 
immediately, for a child should never be spanked. This 



SICK CHILDREN 139 

child was healthy, so sickness was not the cause. I thought 
she might be crying to get her mother's company, and told 
her mother to put her in the next room alone whenever she 
cried. It did no good. The little girl would come to her 
mother in the deepest distress, sobbing, " Mother, I can't 
stop crying. You '11 have to put me in the other room ! " 
That gave me a clue and I discovered the trouble. The 
child had an abnormal appetite for being noticed, and 
wanted everybody to be thinking about her. I advised 
her mother to put her to bed in a distant room and tell her 
that she needn't even try to keep from crying, for no one 
would be disturbed. For a few nights she did cry, but no 
one came near her, and she did not know that any one was 
listening. When crying no longer attracted attention 
she stopped it. She went quietly to sleep every night and 
slept soundly.' x 

When the screaming fits do not take place at a regular 
time there are often premonitory symptoms ; and an 
attack may be staved off by a happy diversion of the 
attention at the right moment. It is a good thing, if 
possible, to enlist the child's co-operation ; advise him 
when he feels himself becoming flushed and angry to take 
a few long breaths, three or ten according to his power of 
counting, or to take a run in the garden, or to go and 
sponge his face with cold water. When he is successful in 
warding off an attack, make it evident that you regard him 
as a man ; if he is unsuccessful, gloss over the failure and 
assure him that he will manage better next time 

Some people think it a good thing to treat the child with 
coldness for some time after the fit of temper has passed 
away. To a warm-hearted child, such as these passionate 
little people usually are, this is a very severe punishment — 
too severe I am inclined to think. If we only knew it, the 
development of the screaming fits is probably our fault as 
much as the child's. And the least we can do is not to 
1 Quoted in Child Study, April 1916. 



140 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

make matters worse by letting the matter assume too large 
proportions. 

If the trouble is physical, as it sometimes is, 1 then certainly 
coldness is out of place. If it is mental, all psychologists 
would, I think, be at one in saying that we should not do 
anything which would cause the matter to linger in the 
child's thoughts. Let it slide out of recollection as quickly 
and gently as possible. 

When the tantrum is in full swing, of course the child 
cannot be in the family circle ; he is best in a room by 
himself, unless there is danger of his breaking something. 
When he recovers, he should be welcomed back, not with a 
fuss ; but it should be plain that we are glad to see he is his 
sensible self once more, and not the silly baby he had 
temporarily become. 

The Untruthful Child. — Among the moralists of this 
country — and most of us are moralists — truthfulness is 
reckoned a very important virtue. When a child is for 
the first time detected in a direct lie, his relatives and 
friends often receive a profound moral shock. Their 
distress is very great, especially if the lie is told in such a 
way as to throw blame on some one else for some act com- 
mitted by the child himself. 

I once happened to be staying with a friend when just 
such a lie was told. A little child had spilt something, had 
denied it, had attempted to put the blame on his father, 
and then, seeing that this explanation was not believed, 
had begun to throw blame on the maid ; then, realising 
that she had not been in the room at all, had resorted to 
repeated asseveration, ' I didn't do it, I didn't do it.' 

At this stage I heard the story, and saw the child, now a 

1 Violent screaming fits, my friend Dr. John Thomson tells me, are 
a common symptom in many diseases of childhood that cause severe 
discomfort and hypersensitiveness. In such cases the use of simple 
medicines will often rapidly restore the child's equanimity and 
prevent recurrence of the attack. 



SICK CHILDREN 141 

sobbing little figure, but still firm to his assertion. I 
looked at him for a minute, then I said, ' I think what you 
mean is that you did do it, but you 're very sorry and you '11 
try never to do it again. Now kiss mother, and we '11 go 
and tidy up.' My explanation and advice were accepted, 
and so the matter ended. 

It may be said that I simply offered the child a way of 
escape from what he was beginning to see was an impossible 
position. But I think my explanation was fundamentally 
true. I have elsewhere tried to show that some children 
deny what has happened or is actually happening in the 
endeavour to crush it out of existence, to make it not have 
happened. This practice is not confined to children. 
Many adults will deny fear or other emotional experience 
that they do not choose to have. 

Again we must remember the tendency to automatism 
that is very marked in all young children. A child having 
once begun to deny or to assert may easily fall into a state 
in which it is impossible for him to say anything else. 

Thirdly, when a child throws the responsibility for his 
act on another, he often knows very well that no blame 
will be attached to his substitute. When he spills, cold 
looks, words of reproof, and perhaps punishment are his 
portion ; but when father spills he is assured that it doesn't 
matter, that accidents will happen. 

A great number of children's lies — perhaps the bulk of 
them — spring from fear — not always the fear of punish- 
ment ; more often, perhaps, the fear of displeasing those who 
are dear to them, of disturbing unfavourably that social 
atmosphere which bulks so largely in human happiness. 
If a child succeeds once or twice in preserving, by means of a 
lie, that social harmony which is of such moment to him, 
there is some danger lest a habit of untruthfulness may 
develop. It is therefore of importance to make him early 
realise that you value truthfulness, that you like to feel 
that you can trust his word. 



142 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

If the fault has developed, meet it with frank discussion 
and sympathy for the weakness which it discloses. Do 
not let it run underground. Children often become morbid 
on the subject of truthfulness, and may suffer tortures of 
remorse over an undiscovered lie. This attitude is simply 
a reflection of that of the adults around them. They 
have been made to feel that to tell a lie is a very terrible 
thing, but they do not in the least know why. Possibly 
they have gathered the notion, or even been actually told 
that God is angry with them if they tell a lie ; and in con- 
sequence unknown terrors lie in wait for their solitary 
hours. Serious psychic injury may result from these 
emotional storms. 

Another type of lie, generally regarded as less serious, 
results from a careless, inaccurate habit of speech. A child 
only half looks at things. He makes statements concern- 
ing them and then feels impelled to stick to his statement. 
Such children require to be trained on scientific lines. It 
is easy to devise observation games in which exactitude of 
expression shall be aimed at. 

Allied to these children are certain imaginative little 
people who allow their play world to become mixed up 
with the real world. A teacher once told me of a little 
pupil of hers who possessed an imaginary dog, about 
which he would talk with grave matter-of-factness. This 
same child once came to school with a tale about how his 
father had broken his arm. For some time the teacher 
made daily inquiries as to his progress, and received 
varying reports. On meeting the mother some time later 
and referring to the accident, she learned that there had 
been none. 

Then there are children who indulge in a game which 
reminds one of the wit combats of the Elizabethan taverns. 
This is a form of play, and the rules of the game seem to be 
pretty well understood by most children. Thus a small 



SICK CHILDREN 143 

friend of Mary's once announced, 'My cat will eat bread 
and butter.' 'Oh,' said Mary without the slightest 
hesitation, ' mine will eat bread and butter, cakes and 
gingerbread.' The challenge was taken up. ' Mine,' 
retorted the friend, ' eats rice pudding. ' Mine,' returned 
Mary, ' eats plum pudding and all sorts of pudding.' 
' Mine eats blancmange.' Mary promptly capped this 
with ' Mine eats blancmange, and jelly and strawberries 
and cream, and gooseberries and raisins.' 

Those who know children will not find it hard to believe 
the fact that Mary had no cat at all. 

Sometimes one unwittingly leads a child on to this kind 
of contest. I was once playing a desert game with Margaret 
(4|) in which we were riding along on our camels. It 
happened that I had recently seen one of the exhibitions of 
wonderful war photographs, among which I had noticed 
one of a soldier with his hand in a camel's mouth. Fearing 
that in previous games I had presented the camel in a 
rather unamiable light, I appropriated this incident for my 
own camel. My little companion at once took up the 
cudgels on behalf of her animal. It turned round its head 
and talked to her ; it told her the way home ; sometimes 
it would get a book and read it ; and so on. Possibly this 
was a polite way of indicating that my story was too 
wonderful for her to believe. But I incline to think it 
was just that my words had set free the impulse to romance, 
which after all is not extinct in many adults, as innumerable 
' tall ' stories testify. 

Some misstatements are wish -fulfilments. Lately, a 
six-year-old friend was telling me of a walk she had just 
had with her father by the river. ' I paddled, and I saw 
lots of little fish, and I stooped down and I caught one in 
my fingers, but I let it away again.' Later I referred to 
this assertion in her father's presence ; he scouted it. I 
turned to the child. ' I thought I did,' she said in a 
subdued, half -puzzled voice. 



144 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

Similar misleading utterances may arise from the identi- 
fication of the self with some imaginary character. One 
morning I was telling Margaret a ' Little Mary ' story. I 
told how Mary when about a year and a half had one day 
been trying to help by mixing up a pudding, and how her 
little hands were so clumsy that they sent much of the 
pudding right over her face. Hardly a minute elapsed 
after my conclusion when Margaret looked up and said, 
' Do you 'member when I was a little baby how I mixed 
up a pudding and it went all over my face ? ' This in- 
cident well shows how the plastic personality of childhood 
enables us to remember many incidents of our early youth 
which never really occurred. 

These romantic tendencies in children are among those of 
which little or no overt notice should be taken. Yet they 
give valuable indications of the kind of training required 
by that particular child. For him stories must be chosen 
with special care and should be strictly limited in quantity. 
His attention should be directed to doing and to learning. 
Contact with other children and their criticism will be helpful. 
Games are excellent, if we can arrange so that the child will 
enjoy and spontaneously seek them. We must beware of 
simply suppressing the tendency so that it no longer shows 
itself in our presence , but is indulged in the inner life of the soul . 

The Disobedient Child. — Disobedience is often directly 
taught. One regrettably common method is by offering 
bribes for obedience. 

* A baby girl of nineteen months was sitting on her 
mother's lap — one of the most sensible and careful of our 
mothers. The father beckoned and called to his baby 
daughter to go to him a little distance off. She firmly 
declined. He held up a ha'penny and she capitulated 
with glee ! Nineteen months ! The way these children 
are bribed with ha'pennies is dreadful. They demand 
ha'pennies before they will do their bounden duty — 



SICK CHILDREN 145 

things about which there should be no question at all. 
This child must have a ha'penny or he will not wear new 
boots, and that a ha'penny or he will not submit to be 
washed. They get their way and spend on their pleasure 
a sum in far higher proportion to the family income than 
children of the wealthy classes, and far higher than they 
could ever rightly continue when grown up.' * 

A mother brings to school her five-year-old boy kicking 
and struggling in her arms. At the door she sets him down 
and gives him a penny to induce him to go in quietly. 

Here is another scene from life : ' Tommy, will you go 
a message for me ? ' 'I will not.' ' Lizzie, will you ? ' 
' I will not.' ' Tommy, will you go if I give you a 
ha'penny ? ' 'I will not.' ' Lizzie, will you ? ' Lizzie 
accepts the offer and goes off. The harassed mother 
returns to her work, having given an excellent lesson in 
disobedience and selfishness. 

Bribery and threats are very effective ways of inoculat- 
ing a child with disobedience. A threat is something like 
a 'dare,' and a child of spirit will take it up. Moreover, 
there is always the sporting chance — and sometimes the 
odds, as the child knows, are overwhelmingly in favour 
of it — that the threat will not be carried out. 

Our teaching of disobedience is not always so flagrant 
as this. One often sees a mother, having given a command 
to a little one, watch to see that the child does what he has 
been told. Now this watching is just equivalent to a 
suggestion that he should not obey. These commands are 
very often prohibitions ; aiid by our manner we keep the 
attractive idea in the child's mind, and add to its compell- 
ing power. We reinforce the idea so that the child cannot 
resist. We then blame or even punish him for disobedience. 

Commands should be given in a matter-of-course way and 
obedience taken for granted. It will generally be obtained. 

Small matters should not be made questions of obedience 
1 The Diary of a Free Kindergarten, by Lileen Hardy. 
K 



146 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

or disobedience. If a child takes his medicines without a 
fuss, and goes happily to bed at the right time ; if we can 
trust him when playing out alone not to go beyond the 
boundary we have assigned, then he is an obedient child. 
He is a responsible person and should be allowed to com- 
mand himself as far as possible. How often does one see 
people turning trifling offences into serious ones because 
they will drag in this question of obedience. 

The way in which we give commands is of considerable 
importance. Thus it is better to say, ' Now after you 've 
tidied your toys, we '11 go for a walk,' than to say directly, 
' Now tidy your toys.' The child feels much more of a 
free agent in the one case than in the other. 

Again, often a time warning should be given so that the 
child may adapt his mind to what is coming. ' In five 
minutes nurse will be coming for you,' or ' There 's time for 
just one more game,' are tactful announcements, and might 
save many a difficulty. 

With some children the words ' Thank you ' and ' Sorry ' 
give much occasional trouble. It seems as if at times they 
could not bring them out. Margaret has stumbled over 
both. Almost from babyhood she developed a rooted 
objection to saying she was sorry, for which I could never 
fully account. She had broken one of her dolls, and some 
time after she said to me, ' Are you sorry I broke the fair 
" flapper " ? ' ' Yes,' I said, ' aren't you ? ' ' I should be,' 
she replied enigmatically, and that was all I could ever 
get out of her. 

Of course it is ridiculous to command a child to say he 
is sorry. If we make him say so when he is not, then we 
have made him tell a lie, which is good neither for him nor 
for us. If we fail to make him, having once commanded 
him, then we turn him into a disobedient child, which again 
is good for neither party. 

What appears to be an obstinate and unreasonable 
refusal to say ' Thank you ' also sometimes occurs. It is 



SICK CHILDREN 147 

not altogether easy to explain this ; but often it is not, I 
am sure, a refusal ; it is a nervous inhibition. The child 
cannot say ' Thank you.' I have seen such a difficulty 
arising in the matter of a piece of cake for which a little 
girl neglected to return the conventional thanks. The 
cake was put to the side of her plate, and she was told she 
must not have it till she said what was expected. She 
flushed, looked distressed, but made no attempt to touch 
the cake. But she would have nothing else. After she 
had finished what she was eating, I pushed the cake towards 
her and said as casually as I could, ' Well, say " Thank 
you " to mother and eat up your cake.' This relieved the 
tension. She dropped out a meek little ' Thank you,' and 
the incident closed. 

I have seen a father urging a baby to say ' Ta ' before he 
would give it a biscuit. Baby cried and stretched, and 
cried and stretched, but apparently wouldn't say ' Ta.' 
Father kept on, ' Say " Ta," Baby, and you '11 get it,' while 
he held the biscuit just out of reach. At length, quite 
accidentally to all appearance, Baby said ' Ta ' and re- 
ceived the promised reward. 

Now here I think Baby's attention was so concentrated 
on the biscuit that she had not any idea what she was 
required to do. I think it was her father's constant re- 
petition of the syllable that caused in her brain a cumulation 
of nervous energy which discharged itself in the sound. It 
was purely automatic. The child was probably quite 
unaware she had said it. Had she been at the thinking 
stage, the giving of the biscuit would have seemed to her 
just as arbitrary as the withholding of it. 

Here as elsewhere we must try to realise the point of 
view of the child. Before we expect him to obey, we 
ought to make sure he can obey. 

The Tell-tale Child. — Many adults have a great dislike 
to the child who tells tales. To tell tales in order to get 



148 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

some one into trouble is, of course, a nasty thing to do. To 
tell of some one else's faults in order to emphasise one's 
own virtues is also not an admirable practice. But in the 
case of little children ' tales ' seldom or never belong to 
either of these classes. 

When Margaret was two and a half she saw a three -year- 
old acquaintance in the park pulling off her bonnet, and she 
said, ' Isn't Frances a naughty girl ? ' 

Now to an adult this looks a little like self -righteousness. 
But I do not think the question is to be so interpreted. It 
is part of a child's business to find out what is naughty 
and what is good, and how can he do this unless he asks just 
such questions as the above ? Margaret's inquiry (p. 137), 
' Did I be naughty 'cause I tumbled ? ' has precisely the 
same end in view as the inquiry concerning Frances. The 
child is trying to form a concept of naughtiness just as she 
has formed other concepts. She knows what a bird is or 
what an animal is because she has heard these names 
applied to many objects, and she has picked out certain 
of the qualities they have in common in virtue of which 
the name is applied to them. In the same way she is, as 
it were, collecting instances of naughtiness in order that 
she may realise clearly what naughtiness is. 

When a little one returns from a visit to other children 
we sometimes receive such a report as this : ' Marion spoke 
to her mother when her mother was speaking to some one 
else.' Now this probably means : ' You have told me that I 
should not interrupt mother when she is speaking to some 
one else : is this true for every one ? ' Such a question is 
not to be regarded as tale -bearing or gossip. 

Again, when some one coughs and the child inquires, 
' Did you put your hand up ? ' no reproof is implied, nor 
is the question rude. In all such questions a genuine 
answer should be given. If we consider the rule referred to 
is of universal application we should say, ' Certainly I did,' 
or ' No, I am sony I didn't. I ought to have, but I forgot.' 



SICK CHILDREN 149 

If, on the other hand, the rule is not one that we consider of 
universal application, we should say so, and in this way 
help the child in the very difficult task of distinguishing 
between morality and convention. 

Delicate Children. — When we have learned to train 
children properly from infancy, it will probably be easy in 
most cases to prevent any sickness of the soul from arising. 
There will always be, nevertheless, cases in which such 
sickness is peculiarly apt to occur. These children may be 
called delicate children. The two chief types of delicate 
children that occur to my mind are the nervous child and 
the only child. Very often they are one and the same. 

Nervousness shows itself in early infancy in difficulty 
of adjustment to the new conditions that obtain after 
birth. Indigestion, light sleep, sudden starts, much 
crying characterise the nervous baby. I wonder if most 
infants, as they He on their nurse's knee after the bath, hold 
up little trembling hands as if imploring protection. Or is 
this a sign of nervousness ? I have seen it in both the 
babies that I have known well ; and neither of them is, I 
think, unhealthily nervous. After all, to be born must be a 
very alarming experience. 

In little children nervousness may bring about inability to 
sleep, inability to eat, inability to perform the natural func- 
tions. These difficulties may become so great that a doctor 
is consulted in the belief that something is organically wrong. 

The trouble generally arises from the suggestibility of the 
child. He is what you expect him to be, he behaves as you 
expect him to behave. A baby is very soon a bundle of 
habits, and you have had the formation of those habits in 
your hands. It is wonderful how even a tiny infant who 
will lie quietly in his mother's arms may insist on his father 
or his nurse walking up and down with him all the time 
they have him. 

When a child comes to understand speech and begins to 



150 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

realise himself as an independent being, we find the 
phenomenon of contra -suggestibility developing. To a 
certain extent this is a normal, perhaps even a praiseworthy 
characteristic. We all have at times the feeling that we do 
not wish to do a thing just because it has been suggested 
to us that we should do it. Margaret once received a 
present of one of those little boxes with materials for 
making designs. When she was looking at the pictures of 
the models given as exemplars, the donor pointed to one 
and said, ' You might make that one.' ' I don't want to 
make your suggestion,' said the child, ' I want to make my 
own.' So whatever model was chosen, it was not that 
particular one. 

The desire to act on their own initiative becomes in some 
children so marked that we can count on their doing the 
exact opposite of what they are told. They resemble the 
cat in the old rhyme : — 

' The dog will come when he is called, 
The cat will walk away.' 

There is, of course, no great difficulty in managing these 
children. One has just to play their game — not too 
seriously — until they realise the foolishness of it, and 
attain a legitimate measure of real independence. The 
phenomenon is apt to become troublesome only in cases 
where this legitimate measure of real independence is not 
allowed. When we observe contra-suggestibility or the 
more serious condition of negativism we have special need 
to ask ourselves if we are obeying Emerson's wise in- 
junction, ' Respect thy child. Be not too much his parent.' 
Negativism consists in a refusal to do anything that is 
asked or expected. Sometimes it takes such an extreme 
form that, as I indicated above, the mother thinks the 
child has some strange disease. And of course if a child 
refuses to eat, refuses to sleep, refuses to do his physical 
duties, he soon will be physically a sick child. At first the 



SICK CHILDREN 151 

sickness is purely mental, and is brought on chiefly by over- 
anxiety on the part of the parents. Only children have to 
be ranked as delicate mainly because they are almost 
certain to be the centre of interest in the household. If 
their appetite fails, if they have a bad night, if they look 
pale, the whole house hears of it and the concern is great. 
And children, like their elders, love to be interesting. 

In fairness to the child we must recognise that once 
negativism is established with respect to any action, its 
grip upon him becomes so great that he cannot help himself. 
A mother is very anxious that for the sake of his health her 
little boy should take a certain article of food. Just 
because of this anxiety, which throws doubt on his taking 
it, the child views the food with suspicion. He tastes it, 
does not like it, as he expected, and refuses it. The 
mother presses it on him. The greater the pressure, the 
greater his resistance. He cannot and will not take it. 
Sometimes an older child, in spite of the inner resistance, 
may succeed in swallowing the obnoxious food in order to 
please his mother. Food taken in such a way will not do 
any good. Moreover, the resistance may bring about 
vomiting, and so the child's plea that he really and truly 
cannot take the food is vindicated. 

It is, I think, between two and three years of age that we 
are most apt to find the beginnings of these troubles. It 
is perhaps not without significance that this is the period 
when conscientious mothers are beginning to think and 
talk of the importance of obedience. 

A child is so suggestible that it is often difficult even for 
those of us who know something of the psychology of 
suggestion to avoid doing him harm. We notice he looks 
tired on a long walk. We comment on his fatigue ; we 
sympathise, advise him to go slowly, to have a rest and 
then go on again. When he forgets his fatigue and moves 
about when he should be resting, we remind him of it, and 
so increase it. 



152 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

I have no doubt that fatigue sometimes causes over- 
excitement in a child and makes him run about more than is 
good for him. In such circumstances we should restrain 
him for his own good, but never by making him think of his 
own bodily condition. It is easy to propose a quiet game 
or a story in such a way that the child will hail it with 
delight. This will give him rest and will at the same time 
produce joy. 

Now joy is accompanied by definite physiological changes 
which make it equivalent to or rather superior to rest. It 
brings about the addition of adrenin to the blood. This 
substance constricts the smaller blood-vessels, thus raising 
the blood pressure and bringing about a freshening of the 
muscles. Joy is attended by an increase of sugar in the 
blood, and this also has a favourable effect on the muscles. 
It also lowers the inhibition exerted by the upper layers 
of the cerebral cortex ; it increases the activity of the 
cranial and sacral autonomic nerve-centres ; it increases the 
expansive and extensor movements of the body ; it con- 
duces to the healthy performance of the functions of the 
skin. 

All this is only the translation into scientific terms of the 
well-known truth : — 

' A merry heart goes all the way, 
A sad one tires in a mile-a. 1 

But the knowledge of these scientific facts gives a firm 
basis to* our empirical belief in this adage. 

It is joy that makes the child tireless in a walk when he 
is allowed to scamper over the links as he pleases. It is 
want of joy that fatigues him when he has to proceed in an 
adult manner along a road or through the streets of a 
town. 

On such walks, then, we owe it to the child to play with 
him, to give him the joy which will carry him along without 
fatigue. If, in spite of this, fatigue shows itself, we should 



SICK CHILDREN 153 

allow or suggest rest, but never allow the child's attention 
to fix itself on the fatigue. 

Nervous children are regrettably common nowadays. It 
is, I suppose, almost inevitable that our comments should 
be called forth by symptoms of nervousness more readily 
than by symptoms of health. It is a pity ; for the effect 
of comment is to fix the symptoms. I suppose there are 
children who are nervous by heredity ; but imitation and 
suggestion, quite apart from heredity, are quite sufficient 
to make the child of a nervous, jumpy mother a nervous, 
jumpy child. 

I had once a little class of eight -year-old children. One 
day Lilian knocked over a pencil-box with a loud crash. 
Mona jumped. ' Why do you jump ? ' I asked. 

' I always jump half out of my seat.' 

' But why ? Alison didn't jump.' Then I added in a 
reproachful tone, ' You must have your nerves in very 
bad order.' 

A little later a similar accident happened. I turned at 
once to Mona. ' Did you jump ? ' 

'No.' 

' That 's right.' 

Family comments on a child's nervousness are nearly 
always such as will increase it, and they may even induce 
a certain pride in it. Good health and steady nerves are a 
far more legitimate source of pride, and the child should 
be made to feel this. 



154 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 
CHAPTER X 

THE NURSERY SCHOOL 

We may, I think, take it for granted that our modern 
thought recognises that there should be some place where 
the poor mother, who has to do outside work for the support 
of herself and her family, can with an easy mind leave her 
little children. Creches and day -nurseries have a recog- 
nised place in our social system. 

It is not yet universally realised that the ' non -working ' 
mother needs help just as badly. If she is a tidy woman, 
her life in our cities is one continual fight against dirt. 
She has the floors to scrub, the grates to clean, the clothes 
to wash ; and with all this there is the continual prepara- 
tion of meals, which in some families, owing to the idio- 
syncrasies of the workers' hours, seem to be wanted at 
every time of day. Very often there is a young baby, and 
this means that the mother frequently gets little rest at 
night, besides having to give constant attention to the 
infant during the day. If the home is in a slum district 
there may be no water in the house, and the work that is 
involved must be tried to be appreciated. 

Now for any grown-up person even in the best conditions 
a toddling child is a trying companion — he does not ' stay 
put ' like a baby ; he never rests, and he has little or no 
idea of danger. His mother turns her back for a moment ; 
Johnny has the coals on the floor, or has pulled the kettle 
over on himself. She leaves the poker in the fire for a 
few minutes ; Johnny pulls it out to touch the red end. 
Then the continual chatter which is good for the child is 
bad for the mother ; it gets on her nerves. And her 
treatment of Johnny is guided less by his deserts than by 
the state of her temper at the moment. This is bad, for it 



THE NURSERY SCHOOL 155 

teaches him that caprice rules the world, and that if you 
yell loud enough you can get your own way. 

Moreover, the toddler requires fresh air and space. If he 
is constantly in the room with his mother, he cannot obtain 
these necessities of healthy life. Possibly the mother often 
pops him on the bed, or in some way restrains his activity 
for safety's sake. Hence are derived the little bent weak 
legs that distress us too often in our streets. 

According to Dr. Brownlee, Statistician to the Medical 
Research Committee, unhealthy surroundings tell twice 
as heavily against the toddlers as against the infants. ' It 
is,' he says, 'in the country districts of England that the 
best conditions for the upbringing of healthy children are 
observed. Taking the death rate in these districts as a 
standard, and taking Salford as an example of an opposite 
nature, it is found that while during the decade 1891-1900 
the infantile mortality was twice that of the country 
districts, the death rate between the ages of two and three 
years was four times that of the country districts.' 

Sir Leslie Mackenzie, from whose Report on Scottish 
Mothers and Children x I take this passage, concludes that 
a ' toddlers' playground is fundamentally essential to the 
health of the children that occupy the crowded quarters 
of every city.' ' Every main block of houses,' he says, 
' should have its toddlers' playground. If the playground 
is to have its full effect, it must be near the house, easy of 
access, and superintended with skill. It then becomes a 
day camp for physical education.' 

The question of superintendence is a vital one. The 
superintendent must combine in a special way the qualities 
we demand in a good children's -nurse, with the qualities 
we require in a teacher of little ones. She must notice the 
children's physical needs and she must be prepared to train 
them in habits of cleanliness. Though they have attained 
the dignity of toddlers, many of them have little or no 
1 Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, 



156 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

control over their physical needs. Not long ago I was in a 
play centre where were gathered some thirty newly enrolled 
little ones under five. During the first half -hour there 
were, I think, four 'accidents.' The children are as un- 
trained as puppies. 

But the superintendent must be able to guide mental 
growth as well as attend to physical training. She should 
be musical, and know many singing games suited to her 
little flock. And especially she should be alert for every 
opportunity of teaching the child language. If we had 
superintendents of this stamp, it seems to me the education 
of the toddlers might be left in their hands at least until 
the age of three. 

Several open-air playgrounds with shelter available 
for wet weather have been established in Edinburgh, and 
have proved a great boon to both mothers and children. 

In connection with at least one of our schools there is a 
small house where the elder girls go at stated times to learn 
housework. One wonders whether the toddlers' play- 
ground might not also in some such way be linked to the 
life of the schools. The girls could be a real help with the 
little ones, and at the same time they would themselves 
gain insight into child nature and child needs. 

These playgrounds would in themselves do much to 
improve the later school efficiency of the children attending 
them, because of the increase of health and happiness which 
would result. 

A few facts supplied to me by an ' infant teacher ' in a 
slum school will round out this bald statement. 

' Many of the newly enrolled five-year-olds,' she says, 
' are undersized and weigh less than a normal child of three. 
In our 1st Infant Class this year we have three little girls, 
all over five, weighing 26, 27, and 28 lbs. respectively. 
Two of them are 32 inches in height, and the other 34. 
The average weight of a five-year-old normal child is about 
44 lbs. 



THE NURSERY SCHOOL 157 

' As you watch these little ones swaying along on their 
rickety little legs you wonder if they are not stray babies 
instead of children of five. 

' I examined the medical sheets of 44 children in my 
present class. Almost one-third had enlarged tonsils, 
and the same number enlarged cervical glands ; 12 were 
anaemic, and of these three had functional disease of the 
heart. One child who entered school when she was four 
years and nine months, had had in her short life measles, 
whooping-cough, scarlet fever, diphtheria, and pneumonia.' 

Truly, as some one has said, a baby must be the hardest 
thing in the world to kill ! 

' Winter is a very trying time for the little ones. It is 
pitiful to see the number of drawn little faces, and lame 
feet caused by broken chilblains. Debility and dirt play 
a large part in prolonging such troubles. Another thing, 
which in my opinion accounts for a good deal of ill -health, 
is want of sleep. When you ask these children if they 
are ever frightened in the dark, they look puzzled. They 
are never in the dark, but are put to sleep usually in the hot 
living room, where they sit up in bed and study their lesson 
book — which is in most cases their only book. 

' Handkerchiefs are the exception and not the rule, and 
many children have actually to be taught how to use one — 
or soft pieces of paper, which make an excellent substitute. 

' We have some children coming to school in bitter 
weather with the remnant of their breakfast slice of bread 
in their hands. Sometimes they have had no warm food 
before they come, not even a cup of tea ; and ere now we 
have made a cup of cocoa or supplemented the dry bread 
with dripping. How to educate a hungry shivering child 
is indeed a problem ! 

' We keep a store of clothing gathered from many 
sources, and often have recourse to it. A little boy with 
chattering teeth is found to have nothing on but a thin 
sailor suit, and a sleeveless remnant of shirt. A daintily 



158 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

dressed little girl is noticed to have bare arms during 
bitingly cold weather. While dressing her with a warm 
under-garment it is discovered that she is clad in the 
thinnest of cotton garments. Though it is contrary to 
the law, we still have a number of barefooted children 
when the weather is far too severe, and it is often a good 
many weeks or even months before boots can be pro- 
cured. These privations often occur even when the 
mother is doing her very best, but there are many cases 
where drink and laziness on the part of the parents are 
allowed to make the life of the children wretched, and to 
ruin their chance of a decent education.' 

Now should such things be ? 

For my part, the more I know of the conditions of women's 
life in our towns, the more intimately I realise the herculean 
nature of their task, the less I can find it in my heart to 
blame these 'degraded' women who, 'blind to the duties 
of wifehood and motherhood,' seek in drink a momentary 
escape from unceasing and hopeless toil. 

I do not deny that many women possess their souls and 
even in impossible conditions maintain the spirit of victory, 
but I do not know how they do it. 

To allow the little children to stumble and fall by the 
wayside in the way we are doing is, as some one has strongly 
put it, 'sheer social suicide.' Society must come to the 
rescue of the overworked mother. The proper place for 
the little child, at least for a certain proportion of every 
twenty -four hours, is very certainly not the home. 

Medical inspection has done much to improve the 
condition of school children, and it is widely recognised now 
that it would be more effective if it could be brought to 
bear at an earlier age. Every toddlers' playground or 
other institution for the care of children should be under 
medical supervision. Child-welfare work in most of our 
big towns is more and more aiming at establishing and 
guarding from the beginning the physical well-being of 



THE NURSERY SCHOOL 159 

every child. Prevention in this case is not only easier, 
but of much greater value than cure. For even if a child 
does win through such a series of attacks as those listed 
above, it is with a sadly weakened constitution. 

Toddlers' pla} T grounds are good, but they are not suf- 
ficient. When the child comes to be three years of age, if 
not sooner, he requires more systematic education than is 
available in the playgrounds, if the wonderful years between 
three and five are not to be wasted. Then comes the time 
of the Nursery School or Free Kindergarten. 

Although those who know the conditions of child life 
in our cities are well aware of the need for such schools, 
yet it may be permissible here to quote a statement with 
reference to Free Kindergartens made some five -and -twenty 
years ago by the principal of a large primary school in San 
Francisco. 

' My school,' he says, ' is in a crowded tenement neigh- 
bourhood. I have many children from tenement houses 
and from the narrow streets south of Market Street. Before 
the days of the Kindergarten, these children, as soon as they 
could crawl, spent their waking lives on the sidewalks. 
From the age of two to six years they pursued the education 
of the streets. 

' The consequences were that at six they came to us with 
a fund of information of the worst description, and a 
vocabulary that might excite the envy of the Barbary 
coast. 

' At the commencement of each new year, they tumbled 
over each other in their rude haste to take up the unex- 
plored life of a school. They were in tens, fifties, hundreds, 
in our yards. 

' The novelty being past, the hard struggle commenced 
of keeping them from joining the army of truants, and 
leading them into habits of work and cleanliness. 

' A freckle-faced, blue-eyed, innocent -looking boy would 
shock and astound us by swearing as roundly as a Nevada 



160 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

mule -driver. He had four years of street training, and it 
was uphill work to uproot the ill weeds so rankly sown, 
and a slow task cultivating a different and better crop. 

' The Kindergartens have changed all this. They have 
taken the babies that used to be consigned to the curbstone 
and guided them along a path of development. 

' They have wisely attempted no cramming of the infant 
brain with premature scholarship. They have surrounded 
the young lives with a fresh atmosphere. They have 
passed the hours in pleasant games, taught a purer language, 
and led the little feet into a new civilisation. 

' The children of tenement houses and narrow streets 
still come in tens, fifties, and hundreds to begin life in a new 
school at the beginning of each school year. I hear no 
more, however, the wild phrases of the Barbary coast, or 
the mule-drivers' oaths. The little ones are clean, self- 
respecting, eager for knowledge. They have opinions of 
their own on many things, and are quite anxious to express 
them. They neither know how to read nor to write. 
They have been taught to see, to observe, to tell about 
what they see and hear. They have been taught to respect 
older people, to be honest, to tell the truth. 

' I think you will now understand why I am so strongly 
in favour of Kindergartens.' 

The conditions so vividly described also obtain here. 
Many of our little children are receiving the education of 
the street. In some it produces an active, roving, assertive, 
self-willed temperament, as in the case of the blue-eyed boy 
depicted above ; in others it reduces life almost to the 
vegetative level ; the children are, as it were, stunned by 
the life of the street ; they lose all initiative, all of that 
spirit of inquiry which to most of us seems a universal 
characteristic of childhood. In the one type we see the 
embryo hooligan, in the other the embryo loafer. 

Free Kindergartens. — The first Free Kindergarten in this 



THE NURSERY SCHOOL 161 

country was opened in 1900 in Woolwich, and the second 
in Edinburgh in 1903. Free Kindergartens may now be 
found also in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, 
and other places. These are for the most part supported 
by voluntary subscriptions, and cater for an infinitesimal 
fraction of the children requiring such provision. 

In Edinburgh we have now five of these baby schools 
which provide for about 150 children. The pioneer one 
has now found an abiding place in the old manse of the 
Canongate parish in Reid's Court. To the back, on the 
north side unfortunately, is a pleasant garden with grass and 
flowers and trees. Here the little ones greet the first snow- 
drop of the year, and here they spend many a happy hour 
sweeping up the golden leaves of autumn. Here also is a 
little enclosure well supplied with sand where can be pursued 
the constructive activities dear to the hearts of children. 

The little scholars are mostly brought by brothers or 
sisters, many of them former pupils at the Kindergarten — 
now at the ' big schule ' over the way. First thing in the 
morning comes the marking of attendance combined with 
a talk. Then there is work with the Montessori material. 
At eleven comes lunch, consisting of a ' piece ' brought from 
home and milk provided by a kind friend of the baby 
school. Two little monitors help to set the tables, which 
with flowers in the centre and a plate and mug for every 
child look very inviting. After the meal is over the 
monitors remain to wash the dishes and to tidy up. The 
others go to the garden for play or work, or next room 
for singing and marching. Later may come a nature 
talk or some other occupation. 

At some of the Kindergartens dinner is provided. At 
Reid's Court the children go home for dinner at twelve, 
and return in the afternoon for sleep — an important 
' subject ' in all the Kindergarten time-tables. 

Education Act. — The recent Education Acts of England 

L 



162 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

and Scotland have empowered Education Authorities to 
make arrangements for (a) supplying or aiding the supply 
of nursery schools for children over two and under five 
years of age, whose attendance at such a school is necessary 
or desirable for their healthy physical and mental develop- 
ment ; and (b) attending to the health, nourishment, and 
physical welfare of children attending nursery schools. 

It may be remarked that the clause is a permissive one. 
Hence it may easily become a dead letter. 

Unless some member of an Education Authority realise 
the importance of the matter, the Authority will be apt 
to do nothing. There are in the Act so many compulsory 
alterations in our educational system that the members of 
an Authority may well feel that they have neither time 
nor energy for non-compulsory work. 

As is well known, the Act provides for an extension of 
the school age and also for a considerable development of 
continuation classes. 

Now I have nothing to say against these provisions. 
But if they are an attempt to remedy those defects in our 
educational system which show themselves in the fourteen- 
year-olds, who leave our schools then, they begin at the 
wrong place. If a child were properly educated from 
babyhood till he was fourteen, he might then be an in- 
telligent and self-respecting person who might profitably 
enter on an apprenticeship, provided he had sufficient 
leisure to continue his cultural education in the lines of his 
own interests. But how many of those who leave our 
schools every year are competent to do this ? 

Our Failures. — It is my firm conviction that most of 
the failures of our present educational system have been 
doomed to be failures from the first day they entered the 
school doors. They have never been able to keep up with 
their companions. From the first they have resigned 
themselves to defeat. The fault in many cases lies back 



THE NURSERY SCHOOL 163 

in the early years of their childhood, and will not be 
remedied by two or by twenty years' more schooling. 

In the Report of the Committee of the Privy Council 
for 1918-19 on Education in Scotland, H.M. Inspector, Mr. 
McKechnie, says with reference to the Glasgow Centres 
formed in conjunction with the Juvenile Employment 
Exchange : ' I am satisfied that the majority are decent 
boys, good at heart, but their manners and bearing are 
rough and often insolent, and there is a pretty widespread 
tendency to resent discipline and defy authority. Granted 
that the conditions are exceptional, and that the return to 
school is resented, even so the defects are serious, and the 
contention that control of the adolescent is necessary is 
abundantly proved.' 

These faults of the adolescent are no plants of sudden 
growth, nor are they the kind of faults that are likely to be 
cured by further instruction on the ordinary school lines. 

Mr. McKechnie goes on to say : ' The taste for literature 
varies greatly. As far as I have been able to judge few 
standard books are taken out, but generally there is appre- 
ciation of a good story. There are, however, some who 
cannot raise sufficient interest to read even a story book. 
As I have already indicated, power of concentration is 
frequently limited. One of the ablest teachers remarked 
that several of his pupils did nothing but look at the 
pictures, a most interesting example of the inability to 
grow up, partly the effect — probably mainly the cause — of 
the popularity of the cinema.' 

Is it not pitiable that after about nine years of schooling 
these poor lads should be approximately at the intellectual 
level of a child of three ? And the terrible thing is that 
they are now much less educable than when they were 
three, having lost the quick intuition, the docility, the 
suggestibility which make it such a delight to teach the 
three -year-old. 

I have said that the nursery school clause in the Act is 



164 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

permissive, and that therefore an Education Authority 
interested in other matters will be apt to let it alone. 

Even if the members of the Authority do realise the 
urgency of the matter, they can do little without public 
support. For naturally we cannot have nursery schools 
without paying for them. And the public grudges money 
spent on education, more especially on what it calls educa- 
tional ' fads.' An Education Authority that spent freely 
on nursery schools would in the present state of public 
opinion have difficulty in justifying its action to its con- 
stituents. 

If, however, the public can be convinced that in neglect- 
ing the little children our policy is of the penny- wise - 
pound-foolish order, then they will support the Authorities 
in starting nursery schools, and will even, if necessary, 
put pressure on them to do so. 

We can, of course, afford the money perfectly well. 
If the war has taught us anything it has taught us this. 
One day's expenditure on the war would, I suppose, equip 
the United Kingdom with all the nursery schools necessary. 

But we like to be sure we get value for our money. 

This is quite right ; and it is only prudent that we 
should call upon those who advocate nursery schools to 
show that we should in actual fact get value for our money. 

The people who cost our community most are the people 
who fill our prisons, our poorhouses, our lunatic asylums, 
our hospitals. We might alter a striking phrase of Milton's, 
and say that these people are handless mouths — that is, 
they do nothing for society, and they are a drain upon the 
resources of society. Anything that would diminish their 
number would be a positive contribution to our revenue. 

That nursery schools would work in this direction is, I 
think, self-evident. The children attending them improve 
in health ; they become more resistant to disease. They 
are happier, and their happiness, together with the relief 
that their temporary absence affords the mother, reacts 



THE NURSERY SCHOOL 165 

favourably on the home. Jangled nerves have time to 
recover, and the necessary household work is done in peace. 

One would be glad to have some definite statistics on 
this matter, but I do not know of any in this country. In 
America, Kindergartens have been tried on a much more 
extended scale. In a paper read before the International 
Congress of Education, Chicago, in 1893, Mrs. Sarah B. 
Cooper, who has done so much for Free Kindergartens, 
claimed that out of nine thousand children who had started 
their school life in the Kindergarten there had been found 
only one arrest. 

Again, in all our large elementary schools there are a 
considerable number of retarded children. Some of these 
children fall into line again after being ' kept back ' — that is, 
after being made to do the same work over again a second 
year. Some, however, never fall into line. They form the 
tail end of whatever class they are put into. Not only do 
they learn little or nothing themselves, but they act as a 
drag upon the others. 

Now in the case of these children we are not getting value 
for our money. 

Would a parent like to send his son to school, pay his 
fees for five years, and at the end of that time find that he 
can neither read nor write ? 

Yet the State, which with regard to education stands to 
some extent in loco parentis to these children, can afford 
to fling away its money — our money — in this way. 

I do not say that the percentage of children who at ten 
years of age — that is, after five years of schooling — are un- 
able to read and write is a large one. But to a parent each 
child is of importance. In this matter we must follow the 
example of the good shepherd who left the ninety and nine 
in order to search for the one sheep that was lost. 

In Scotland we have a general test called the Qualifying 
Examination which all children ought to pass at twelve 
years of age. The requirements of this test are : Ability 



166 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

to read at sight a passage of moderate difficulty, to write 
to dictation, to answer questions on the text of the reading 
book, to write a composition, the heads being given ; 
arithmetic involving the four simple rules, common 
weights and measures, and a slight knowledge of fractions ; 
reasonable proficiency in the other subjects approved in 
the scheme of work for the class. If a child cannot pass 
this very reasonable test after seven years' schooling, are 
we getting value for our money ? 

In the Annual Report for 1917-18 of the Edinburgh 
School Board I find it stated that 612 pupils having 
attained the age of fourteen left school to go to work 
without passing the Qualifying Examination. This is not 
a negligible number. 

The following table, taken from the same report, shows 
how many retarded children there are in the Edinburgh 
schools : — 

Summary of Scholars at the Different Ages in 
the Various Divisions 



Between the Ages of 




4 

and 

5 


5 

and 

6 


6 
and 


7 
and 

8 


8 j 9 
and and 

9 10 


10 
and 
11 


n 
and 

12 


12 
and 
13 


13 

and 

14 


14 

and 

15 


15 
and 
16 


Infants 

Junior 
Division 

Senior 
Division 


105 






2520 


565 94 


17 
1435 


5 
436 


1 
111 

2664 


32 
1367 


8 
139 


6 


|3026 


4080 | 




52 


1 1672 3( 




13 | 925 


S 2849 3696 | 


1 



The children who are in the class normal to their age are 
indicated by the dark lines enclosing the numbers. The 
numbers to the left show advanced children — children 



THE NURSERY SCHOOL 167 

who are young for their class ; the numbers to the right 
show retarded children. 

In many cases the retardation is a matter of little or no 
moment. If a child is taking an intelligent part in the 
intellectual life of the class and is happy in it, I should not 
worry about a certain amount of retardation. Let us, on 
the supposition that this is so, neglect all the children 
who are just one year retarded ; I have indicated them by 
means of dotted lines. When we now examine the table 
we see that there are more than 600 children between the 
ages of eight and thirteen who are still in the Infant De- 
partment, which they ought to have left at the age of seven ; 
there are more than 500 children between the ages of eleven 
and fifteen still in the Junior Division, which they ought to 
have left at the age of ten ; there are more than 1500 
children over thirteen still in the Senior Division, which 
they ought to have left at the age of twelve. 

Even of these two year retardations of course a con- 
siderable proportion can be more or less satisfactorily 
accounted for. Irregular attendance, bad health, degrad- 
ing home conditions, etc., play their part. But these 
causes also require to be investigated individually with a 
view to their removal. Moreover, none of those I have 
mentioned need be a real obstacle to intellectual progress. 
The main cause of backwardness is, I am convinced, to be 
sought and found in the widespread belief that intellectual 
training in the first five years of life is impossible, or useless, 
or positively harmful. 

The five-year-old whose mental training has been 
neglected is apt to find himself inefficient, unequal to the 
occasion in every class. If he is physically fit, he seeks 
to re-establish himself in his own eyes and the eyes of his 
companions by naughtiness, impertinence, mischief, and 
general unruliness. If he is of depressed vitality or of an 
amiable, conciliatory disposition, he does his best to pick 
up answers that may satisfy the teacher ; but he has no 



168 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

real convictions about the Tightness or wrongness of his 
own answers. 

For this state of things I would not have it for a moment 
supposed that I blame the teachers. I have personal 
knowledge of the work of a number of teachers in ele- 
mentary schools and I have the greatest admiration for it. 
They are doing excellent work under conditions that are 
often devitalising and depressing. Their very mistakes 
are often the product of over anxiety to help the progress 
of their pupils. 

The Remedy. — At this stage those of my readers who 
know anything of education in the schools of the nation 
are saying to themselves : ' Of course the classes are too 
large ; every one is agreed about that, and that is one of 
the things that is going to be remedied.' Not long ago 
(4th August 1919) Mr. D. M. Cowan stated in Parliament 
that he hoped classes would ultimately be reduced to 
twenty or thirty pupils. The Secretary for Scotland said 
the size of classes was a vital question, and the Department 
bore it in mind. He did not know that he could give any 
definite undertaking in regard to it, but they were quite 
alive to individual teaching, which was necessary to secure 
effective educational training. 

It may be that the classes are too large. Certainly if a 
teacher feels that his class is too large, then it is too large. 

In this matter, however, we are as usual beginning at the 
wrong end. We assume that education is more important, 
and therefore more individual attention is required, the 
higher we ascend the schools. So we decrease numbers in 
Higher Grade classes. 

Now if there is any class in school where the amount of 
individual attention that can be given by a teacher, who 
at the same time is in charge of the class as a whole, is a 
profitable investment it is in the Infant Department — in 
the newly enrolled class. Here the material is most 



THE NURSERY SCHOOL 169 

malleable, and is least affected by those confused ideas and 
senseless prejudices which characterise the backward child 
in the upper school. If every child could be educated on 
individual lines until he was seven, then we should have 
little or no complaint of the size of classes in the upper school. 

If at seven years of age our children were all still eager 
to learn what the school has to teach, if they knew the 
difference between understanding and not understanding, 
if they could ask questions which would focus their own 
difficulties, if in a word we could count on the intelligent 
and eager co-operation of every member of the class, then 
the work of teaching would be a delight. It is the child 
who does not know what it is to understand, who has 
never in his life experienced the pleasure of a clear-cut 
thought, that forms the problem. He knows the path of 
learning is beset with thorns, but he can neither cut his 
own way through nor can he indicate to us where for him 
the thorns are thickest. We labour to remove difficulties 
he has never even reached, and are blind to those which 
hold him prisoner. 

When I speak of education on individual lines I mean 
what I say ; I do not mean class education, no matter what 
the size of the class is. If you take even twenty unselected 
five -year -olds, and teach them on class lines, you will be 
wasting the time of some, while you are going too fast for 
others. Each child is really at a different stage and each 
child has his own characteristic rhythm of learning. 

Now the only system that I know that renders individual 
education possible with large groups of children is education 
conducted on Montessori lines ; that is, the child must be 
provided with material which will, with a certain amount 
of direction from the teacher, enable him to educate himself. 
By this system groups of forty or more children can, under 
the superintendence of one teacher, receive instruction 
exactly adapted to their needs. Under-pressure and over- 
pressure are both avoided. 



170 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

One remedy, then, for the existing state of things would 
be to individualise instruction in the infant classes. 

Something else is necessary also. What is to happen to 
the large number of slow and backward children in the 
upper school who are the real cause of the teachers' outcry 
for smaller classes ? 

These children are probably to a large extent unfit for 
education on Montessori lines because they have lost the 
eager activity and initiative of childhood. Smaller classes 
will not help them, for even with a class of twenty, one 
cannot give them the attention they require without doing 
injustice to the rest. In the favourable conditions of the 
private school where the classes numbered from five to 
fifteen or so, I have several times met with those retarded 
children. I did not at that time know so much about the 
nature of the problem they present as I do now ; I took 
them as they came, and I did my best with them. But I 
knew then, and I know still better now, that they were not 
getting the kind of attention they required ; and they were 
affecting very unfavourably both the spirit of the class and 
the work of the class. 

The remedy does not lie in smaller classes. 

What we want is the services of a specialist teacher who 
shall take these problems of the classroom individually, 
find out what is the source of the trouble, and take steps 
to remedy it. Such a teacher should be provided with a 
small room pleasantly furnished, not as a classroom, but 
as a sitting-room with a table in the centre at which several 
people can write. She must have had a thorough training 
in the psychology of childhood, and in the modern methods 
of diagnosing psychic disturbances. She must combine 
with her knowledge quick sympathy, a sense of humour, 
considerable ingenuity, and a readiness to enter into 
children's play. She should also be imbued with the 
spirit of the student, for in this region much research is 
still necessary, and the writing of reports on the psycho- 



THE NURSERY SCHOOL 171 

logical aspects of her work, the keeping of charts of individual 
progress, etc., should be a recognised part of her duties. 

In Erewhon, when one felt a temptation to make off 
with one's neighbour's goods or otherwise break the moral 
law, one went to the ' Straightener ' and he advised what 
one should do for the health of one's soul. The teacher 
whom I have depicted would be a Straightener. Any 
child who was not doing satisfactorily in class would be 
sent to her and she would devise remedies. 

Each such child would be interviewed by her individually, 
at which interview she would test his intelligence and by 
other means at her command diagnose the trouble. There- 
after he would come to her either alone or with others at 
such times as she might appoint, in order that a remedy 
might be applied. 

Inability to make progress in arithmetic is a very common 
complaint among the retarded children. The Straightener 
would see these children for five minutes, ten minutes, half 
an hour, once, twice, or thrice a week. (See Chap, vm.) 
She might have several of them at one time playing number 
games round her table. She would in time return many, 
if not all of them, to their classes able to march with the 
class, with the teacher of which she would be in close 
touch. 

This method of dealing with the problem would be more 
successful, more scientific, less expensive than simply 
reducing the size of all classes. 

Place of the Nursery School. — The work of the 
Straightener would be rendered very much easier, and 
indeed in time might almost disappear, if every elementary 
school were fed by a little group of nursery schools. 

In this place I do not propose to go into the various 
administrative questions connected with these schools. 
The size of the school, the staff, the building, the furnishing 
must be settled in the light of experience and with due 



172 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

regard to local conditions. The Board of Education has 
issued Regulations for Nursery Schools * which are accepted 
as very satisfactory by those who have experience in this 
matter. And of course no one about to concern himself 
with the starting of such a school should fail to see a few of 
those already in existence. 

In the present state of our knowledge of child psychology 
the curriculum of the nursery school should be regarded as 
a field in which much careful experimental work is still 
desirable. 

In our country those who have most clearly recognised 
the necessity of giving to the little child a systematic 
education have been emphatic in asserting their conviction 
that no formal training in reading, writing, or arithmetic 
should be given. This has often resulted in no incidental 
training being given either. And in the case of number 
especially this is, I am convinced, a very great mistake. 

Number is the pons asinorum of the school child, and 
many there are who stumble thereon. It seems to me that 
the nursery school period is certainly, in the case of most 
children, the period when the art of counting should be 
acquired ; and that the teacher should lose no natural 
opportunity to bring the number aspect of things before 
the child's notice. (Cf . p. 130.) 

Our attitude towards reading and writing in the 
nursery school ought to be profoundly modified by the 
results of Dr. Montessori's experimental work. Whatever 
difference of opinion may exist as to the wisdom of adopting 
her method in its entirety there are, I think, no two opinions 
with respect to her method of teaching writing. Every 
one admits that she has enormously facilitated the child's 
task in acquiring this difficult art. 

Now Dr. Montessori says that by her method the child 
can best learn to write between the ages of four and five. 

1 Education, England and Wales : Regulations for Nursery Schools, 
1919. Price Id. 



THE NURSERY SCHOOL 173 

' The analysis of sounds which, in our method, leads to 
spontaneous writing, is not, to be sure, adapted to all 
ages. It is when the child is four or four and a half that he 
shows the characteristically childlike passion for such work, 
which keeps him at it longer than at any other age, and 
leads him to develop perfection in the mechanical aspect of 
writing. ... In general, all children of four are intensely 
interested in writing, and some of our children have begun 
to write at the age of three and a half. We find the children 
particularly enthusiastic about tracing the sandpaper 
letters. . . . The average time that elapses between the first 
trial of the preparatory exercises and the first written 
word is, for children of four years, from a month to a month 
and a half. With children of five years, the period is much 
shorter, being about a month, but one of our pupils learned 
to use in writing all the letters of the alphabet in twenty 
days. Children of four years, after they have been in school 
for four months and a half, can write any word from 
dictation, and can pass to writing with ink in a notebook. 
Our little ones are generally experts after three months' 
time, and those who have written for six months may be 
compared to children in the third elementary . Indeed 
writing is one of the easiest and most delightful of all the 
conquests made by the child.' 1 

Children who begin to learn to write at five, although 
they learn more quickly than the four-year-olds, do not, 
according to Dr. Montessori, attain to such perfection, 
because they are not willing to trace the sandpaper letters 
such a number of times. With them the most favourable 
time for learning this particular activity is already passing 
away. 

If this be so, it is clearly important that we should 
reconsider the position that has hitherto been taken 
up with regard to reading and writing in the nursery 
school. 

1 The Montessori Method, p. 294. 



174 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

In four of the Free Kindergartens in Edinburgh, where 
the children enter usually at three and remain till five, the 
Montessori material is used. In Reid's Court it has been 
in use now for about five years. The period devoted to its 
use is much shorter than in the Montessori schools, being 
about three-quarters of an hour each day ; but not one of 
our children has learned to write nor have they shown 
much interest in analysing sounds. Margaret, on the other 
hand, did display this interest, but I was not able to ex- 
periment satisfactorily in her case with the necessary 
material at the most favourable age ; and when I had an 
opportunity she had reached the stage when she did 
not feel moved to touch the letters sufficiently often. 
(Seep. 103.) 

Dr. Montessori says that the children often recognise the 
letters by touch before they can recognise them by sight. 
We were able to confirm this observation in the case of 
certain Kindergarten children, but Margaret, who could 
readily recognise the letters by sight, found it very difficult 
or impossible to identify them by touch. (Cf. p. 107.) 

Instruction according to the Montessori method is not, of 
course, to be reckoned as formal. By that word in this 
connection we usually mean administered to the child in 
class and at certain fixed times. The Montessori child is 
free to take the instruction or to leave it. No one forces 
it upon him. 

With our children at Reid's Court I feel if the habit of 
writing should once develop among them, then it would 
maintain itself ; but so far, any child who has begun to 
write a little has had almost immediately to leave us for the 
' big school,' and so once more writing has ceased to be 
visible as one of the little ones' activities. The impulse to 
imitate, I am convinced, has much to do with the success of 
the Montessori material. 

If writing finds a place in the nursery school then, of 
course, reading would also, for the child, having translated 



THE NURSERY SCHOOL 175 

the sounds which make up a word into written symbols, 1 
has now to translate it back into sounds — that is, read the 
word he has made. This is the more difficult task. Writ- 
ing, indeed, is distinctly easier for the child than reading ; 
as is shown by the fact that some defective children learn to 
write well, though they do not succeed in learning to read. 

Whatever we may think of the problem presented by 
the three R's, every one is agreed that language training is an 
important function of the nursery school. I have already 
made various suggestions as to method. (See Chaps, iv., v.) 

Music is one of the talents which develop early. Mere 
babies can recognise and sometimes hum tunes. Children 
so defective in intelligence that they cannot learn to speak 
will recognise and join correctly in tunes sung by the class. 
In all Kindergartens much time is rightly given to singing 
games. These, of course, help to teach language, and many 
can be obtained which help to teach number also. 

Even Kindergarten children respond readily to differences 
of time and rhythm in music. Our children at Reid's 
Court express waltz time by a swaying movement from 
side to side. This response they developed themselves. 

At one or two of our Scottish Kindergartens I have 
heard a band. With drums, triangles, and two pairs of 
blocks clashed together the children with a little guidance 
make a pleasurable s}miphony. 

The question of handwork is an important one. I am 
inclined to think that the proper place for handwork, as 
the term is usually understood, is not in the nursery school 
at all, but in every department of the ' big school.' When 
Margaret was about three her most beloved occupation 
was wrapping up parcels, a very suitable form of hand- 

1 This he does first by means of a movable alphabet, not by 
actual writing. 



176 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 

work, which involved frequent changes of bodily position. 
To move across a room silently, to open and shut a door 
without sound, to move light little chairs and tables, to 
dust a room, to wash dishes and dry them, to wash and 
dry one's own hands and face, are occupations which will 
delight the three and four year olds. But five is young 
enough for even the simplest forms of paper-folding and 
clay-modelling. 

Dr. Montessori's didactic material as prepared for the 
little ones in the children's houses should be available in 
every nursery school. The hand training given by the 
use of this material exactly meets the children's needs. 
Free drawing also is an occupation which attracts early. 

Games should be played in the nursery school, and 
continued in the ' big school.' At present the transition 
between the two schools is too sudden ; and the first effect 
of the change is a lowering of the mental level, and with that 
the vitality of the children. This depressing effect of the 
entry upon school life seems to hold everywhere. In France 
children leave the Kindergarten at six years of age — a year 
later than with us. Schuyten, in his work on feminine 
education, has some very striking paragraphs on the im- 
mediate psychic influence of the school. The child in the 
Kindergarten enjoys an immense amount of liberty ; his 
need of movement is recognised and his muscular energy is 
allowed scope. His teacher is like a mother to him ; school 
does not weigh on him too heavily. At six years of age he 
is brusquely thrown into the life of the big school, where 
there is no garden, no play ; where discipline is severe, 
and movement forbidden. The child is disillusioned ; his 
expansion ceases ; he returns within himself ; his personality 
contracts ; he develops fear ; he dare no lorger see, hear, 
or speak so well as he did ; he falls into a state of depression 
from which he may take some years to recover. 

If the first few weeks in the Infant Department were 
devoted quite simply to making the children happy, the 



THE NURSERY SCHOOL 177 

time would be well spent. Fixed desks should be abolished, 
so that there might be plenty of room for marching and 
running and dancing and skipping. Every day should be 
like the nicest kind of children's party where there are 
plenty of sensible games, and no over-excitement. If I 
were an inspector I should regard no infant class as satis- 
factory, unless the children were joyful. 

If the Montessori method and the Montessori spirit were 
introduced into the Infant Department matters could not 
fail to improve. Time would be given to the children to 
adjust themselves ; in fact if they had in the nursery 
school been accustomed to work with the Montessori 
material, the very sight of the apparatus would make them 
feel at home at once. We should then have some chance 
of obtaining that continuous growth of the mind which is 
so essential for healthy and harmonious development. 



M 



LIST OF OTHER WORKS 



The Dawn of Mind. By Margaret Drummond. (Arnold.) 

Mentally Defective Children. By A. Binet and T. Simon ; trans- 
lated by W. B. Drummond, with Appendix containing the 
Binet-Simon Tests of Intelligence by Margaret Drummond. 
(Arnold.) 

Fatigue. By A. Mosso ; translated by Margaret Drummond, 
M.A., and W. B. Drummond, M.D., F.R.C.P.E. (Allen and 
Unwin.) 

Elements of Psychology. By S. H. Mellone, M.A., D.Sc, and 
Margaret Drummond, M.A. 

Report of Experiment with the Montessori Apparatus. Pedagogical 
Laboratory Reports, No. 1. (Moray House Training College, 
1914.) 



178 



INDEX 



Adolescent, 163. 
Age norm, 17. 
American army, 20. 
Association, 71. 
Automatism, 141. 

Backward children, 13, 

167, 170, 171. 
Binet, 14, 17, 23. 

Composition, 62, 93. 
Conflict, 25. 

Contra-suggestibility, 150. 
Creche, 154. 

Darwin, Francis, 11. 
Death, 43. 

Dramatic expression, 75-9. 
Dreams, 36-8. 

Education Act, 161, 164. 
Effort, 65. 

Fairy stories, 28, 29. 
Fantasy, 31, 35, 143-4. 
Fatigue, 128, 151. 
Fatigue, false, 86. 
Freud, 3, 36, 37. 

Glenconner, Lady, 5. 

Habit, 149. 
Handwork, 175. 

Imitation, 153, 174. 
Inhibition, 147, 149 
Instincts, 25. 

Intelligence Quotient, 18, 21, 
Intensive work, 8-10. 
Inversion, 61, 100, 113, 115, 1 



Jung, 39. 
Joy, 152. 

Kindergarten, 104, 107, 121, 
145. 

Iqk ! Language teaching, 45, 156, 
175. 

Mackenzie, Sir Leslie, 155. 
Medical inspection, 158. 
Medical Research Committee, 

155. 
Memory, 24, 65. 
Midsummer Night's Dream, 73, 

96. 
Mind-blindness, 83, 88, 89, 91. 
Mistakes, children's, 77, 89, 114. 
Montessori, 5-7, 9, 81 102, 103, 

105, 107, 108, 169, 170, 172-3, 

174, 176, 177. 
Multiplication. 124, 126, 128, 

134. 
Music, 4, 175. 

Negativism, 150. 
Nervousness, 149, 153, 154. 
Number, 119, 172. 
Nursery schools, 108-9, 159, 171. 

Obedience, 144, 151. 

Pedagogical seminary, 47, 53. 
Physical health, 157, 164. 
Poetry, 69, 78, 79. 

Qualifying examination, 165, 
166. 

Rationalisation, 34, 112. 
Reading, 86, 110, 128. 
Recklessness, 138. 

179 



180 FIVE YEARS OLD OR THEREABOUTS 



Religion, 4. 
Reserve, 38, 41. 
Ritual, 27. 

Screaming fits, 138. 

Sex, 38. 

Speech, 45. 

Spelling, 60, 111, 114, 116. 

Stanford Revision of Bintt Scale, 

18, 21, 48. 
Stories, 29-31, 63, 68. 
Straightener, 171. 
Sublimation, 27. 
Suggestibility, 149, 151, 163. 
Supernormal child, 22. 



Terman, 18, 19, 48. 
Tidiness, 101, 137. 
Toddlers' playgrounds, 156. 
Touch training, 104, 107. 
Truthfulness, 140. 

Visual imagery, 30, 109, 115. 
Vocabulary, 45, 47, 116. 

Wells, H. G., 11. 
Whipple, 50. 

Word-blindness, 108, 129. 
Word meanings, 54. 
Writing, 91, 99, 103, 173-4. 



Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty 
at the Edinburgh University Press 



